The Superheroics of Haruhi Suzumiya
by FoxOnPie
Summary: In a world where everyone is super, Izuku Midoriya was born as a rare outlier without any powers. In spite of that, he never once lost sight of his dream of becoming a Hero. He never lost sight of it, but at the same time, he wished that there was someone in his life who was Quirkless like him and would be able to relate to his struggles. Enter Haruhi Suzumiya. *Now on TVTropes!*
1. Fight! Burning Soldier of Chaos, Eri!

In a world—can't believe she's making me open with that—where evil is always the main course and justice is merely the appetizer the host forgot to defrost, people have abandoned hope as easily as a teenage mother abandons their infant child in a dumpster. A narrator shouldn't have been forced to say something so terrible, so I think it'd be best to quickly introduce the Hero of our story.

Her name is Eri, and despite being a child, she's a magical girl who protects the weak with the power of the gentle darkness. Standing next to her is mentor Mikuru Asahina, a time travelling waitress from the future. If you're wondering how and why a time travelling waitress ended up mentoring a magical girl, well, it's pointless to explain, so I won't. You might also be wondering why Mikuru is dressed like a playboy bunny—if you're wondering why Eri isn't also dressed as a playboy bunny, then this is not the movie for you, so please leave. Anyway, Mikuru wasn't allowed to take any money with her from the future, so she has to work part-time at the Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall to make ends meet, and the cliched fetish outfit is supposed to help draw in customers to whatever store she's working at. Today, she's advertising a cabbage sale at the local vegetable stand—Sadara's Yummy Vegetables—and little Eri is doing her best to help out, even going with her to her next job with the local butcher. You'd think that Mikuru being Eri's advisor would result in more than using loopholes to work around child labor laws, but here we are.

Also, it just occurred to me that I shouldn't have brought up that last part, so let's cut away and try to get back to the plot.

* * *

We succeeded in getting back to the plot, but at the moment, it has nothing to do with Eri or Mikuru. No, right now, the focus is on a handsome young man named Itsuki Koizumi. Sure, he might be innocently walking through town underneath the setting sun, but unbeknownst to even Itsuki, he's a powerful Esper whose psychic powers could very well decide the fate of the world. Normally, something like that would be important enough to at least be detailed within the story, but I guess some people thought that there wasn't enough time for something like that. Somehow.

Anyway, like I said, Itsuki's psychic powers can decide the fate of the world, and it's for that reason that Eri and Mikuru have been tasked to protect him—again, this probably should have been discussed in-universe, but fine. What isn't fine, however, is the fact that someone wants to use Itsuki's powers for their own dastardly purposes.

Wait, "dastardly?" Who says that anymore? Whatever, let's just cut to the next scene.

* * *

Standing on top of a completely random building that—for legal reasons—is most assuredly not U.A., is an expressionless girl wearing a witch hat. The wind blew her cape back dramatically, but her lack of expression contrasted it in a way that made it feel like the director was trying to force dramatics out of the scene, even though it didn't work. Either way, this girl is Yuki Nagato, an alien witch who wants Itsuki to fulfill her own contemptible—who left a thesaurus lying around?—purposes. You probably think it's weird that Yuki is both an alien and a witch, just like you probably think it's weird that she's standing here for no reason in addition to how it's clearly daytime, even though the last scene depicted everything at sunset. Well, editing is hard, especially when the director cares more about putting scenes in where they'll be "the coolest" as opposed to putting them where they'll actually make sense, so that's something we all just have to live with.

You, however, can do a lot better than that by picking up your own editing software at Toshi Electronics! Computers, batteries, video games, even refrigerators! They've got gadgets and gizmos aplenty, so come on down for whatever you might need!

Anyway, let's just cut away and move past this.

* * *

We're back to Itsuki walking about without a care through town; it's sunset again for some reason, but his clothes are different, so I guess it's a new day? And nothing important happened until then? Well, something important is definitely happening now, as Itsuki's random walking came to a halt when he found himself confronted with none other than Yuki, herself.

"Who are you?" Itsuki asked in a very stilted tone of voice.

"My name is Yuki Nagato," said Yuki. "I am an alien witch from another planet, and I have come here to kidnap you so I may lay waste to your civilization and begin my conquest of your entire galaxy."

"No way!"

"Yes way." Yuki pulled out a wand and pointed it at Itsuki. It was undoubtedly a shoddy-looking wand that looked like a child's arts and crafts project, but please accept the fact that it's supposed to be a powerful weapon constructed from the cosmic energy of a quasar, meaning that it's not at all the kind of thing you want someone to point at you. "Now, come with me quietly, or I will be forced to use force to force you to forcibly come with me."

"N-N-Not so fast!" Stammered speech boldy interrupted redundant speech as the camera shakily pans over to the left to reveal that Eri and Mikuru apparently arrived at some point. Eri was wearing the same magical girl outfit and holding the same staff from earlier—if you've seen literally any magical girl show, you've probably seen it—but Mikuru was now dressed in an orange waitress outfit as opposed to the playboy bunny outfit from earlier. Thank God for that.

"Who are you?" Itsuki asked, his delivery not getting any better any time soon.

"I-I am, um, I am the…" Eri brought a hand to her face; I don't know why, but it sure wasn't to read lines sloppily written on her palm, I'll tell you that. "I-I am the Burning Soldier of Lovely Chaos, Eri! I am an avatar for the… the Gentle Darkness? What? Nee-san, what does that mean?"

"I-It means that it's up to you to defeat her, a-and it's up to me to help you do that! I-I think," Mikuru said. "N-No! I'm your advisor, so I say th-that that's right! N-Now, Yuki! P-Prepare to be vanquished! G-Get her, Eri!"

"Bring it, bitch." Yes, Yuki was the one who said that, and yes, it did sound terrible, but please try to ignore it. Just focus on the absolutely riveting battle, which had Yuki and Itsuki just standing there while Eri stared them down and shook like a leaf. Mikuru, who wasn't fairing much better, gave her a pat on the back, and after some more standing around that absolutely had to be captured on film for some reason, Eri started running at Yuki with her eyes closed and while swinging her staff around at random.

Naturally, she ran headfirst into a telephone pole.

"So this is the extent of your power, then?" Yuki asked. "If that is the case, then I do not need to worry about dealing with you. We shall continue this at a later date." Yuki turned away from them and walked away for reasons I just do not understand. If Eri is really so beneath her, why not kill her on the spot? That would save her a lot of trouble, wouldn't it? I don't think I'm crazy for thinking that.

"Are you all right?" Itsuki asked Eri, his dialogue still incredibly stilted. Eri just nodded her head as tears began to well. "By the way, who are you two, anyway?"

"O-Oh, we're nobody important! Just some good samaritans looking to do good samaritan-type things!" Mikuru said. Before Itsuki could pry further with poorly-delivered lines, Mikuru picked up the crying Eri and carried her off towards the sunset. What a girl.

You know what could have really helped Eri out back there? A gun. Wait, what? She's a little kid, why am I—I mean, why am I _not _talking about all the great deals going on right now at Gunther's Model Guns? From pistols to assault rifles, they've got everything at half off for a limited time, and all products are so realistic that anyone can feel like an action star while holding one!

That was very painful. Let's just move past this.

* * *

Move past it, we did. We now find our heroes—very loose usage of the term—confronting Yuki once more in a park; it's clearly early daytime, so it must be the day after the previous scene, and somehow there was nothing important happening until now. Fine.

"So you have come to face me again, Eri?" Yuki asked. "Very well. This time, I shall defeat you so thoroughly that not even an atom is left over." If she could really do that, then it doesn't make sense that she didn't do it last time. Are we ever going to get an explanation for that, or is it just something that'll forever be ignored? Probably the latter.

"Th-This won't be like last time, you evildoer, you!" Eri said.

"Right, because you'll be fighting _me_!" Mikuru said. "You are clearly too strong for my disciple to handle, s-so for the sake of the world, I will take you on in her place."

"Wait, she's too strong for me?"

"I think so?" It really is hard to tell. "A-Anyway, prepare for your ultimate reckoning!"

"No," said Yuki, because of course she did. Regardless, Mikuru threw her hands out and fired beams of light at Yuki. To the untrained eye, those beams of light might look like poorly rendered digital effects, but I assure you that they are quite the deadly force. Of course, their deadliness was ruined by how easily Yuki blocked them with her wand, but Mikuru deserves points for trying, right?

"M-My current tactics aren't working!" Mikuru said. "I have no choice but to, um, but to use my secret technique!" This is the kind of moment that's normally oozing with tension, but that's kind of impossible when Mikuru fought Yuki for all of three seconds before deciding to use her "secret technique". Regardless, Mikuru closed one eye, put a sideways "V" around the other, and stammered out the phrase, "Mikuru Beam!"

As the Mikuru Beam was fired, Yuki ran over to Mikuru and tackled her to the ground. Eri flew into a panic, a certain director started giving very audible commentary while we were rolling; it became a lot, so I'm going to take this time to talk about the Mikuru Beam. The Mikuru Beam is an incredibly powerful attack, but it's important to remember that it's incredibly fictional. While we do live in a world where people can shoot lasers out of their eyes, that's not something you can do if your Quirk has long since been established to give you a completely different power. So even if Mikuru does something like that here, the real Mikuru—assuming there even is a real Mikuru—won't be able to do that because the Mikuru Beam isn't real.

You probably all think no one's dumb enough to need an explanation like that, but you'd be surprised. Think about that as we cut away from all of this?

* * *

I'm as surprised by the scene change as you are. The fight had barely even started, yet we're apparently done with it now. As for the current scene, the three of them are by what appears to be a lake, and I guess we're just supposed to accept that this is where they're fighting now instead of the park.

Whatever. What's probably more important is the fact that Eri and Mikuru are being attacked by what appears to be a quartet of what appears to be zombies. Yuki is waving her wand around like a conductor, so it's safe to assume that she's controlling these people with her alien magic.

"Brains… brains… brains…" mumbled one of the zombies, a blonde-haired young man with eyes that looked straight out of an old school American cartoon. He was doing that, even though literally none of the other zombies were doing it, and another zombie—a young girl dressed in some sort of elaborate outfit—even broke character to reprimand him about it—I mean, resisted Yuki's spell enough to try and snap him out of it.

"Hahahaha! Oh my God, you're all just too much, nyoron!" Just assume that that person is also able to resist the zombification, to a degree. It really shows that underneath it all, there's still a bit of humanity inside these people, which is why Eri and Mikuru are doing nothing to oppose them. The fact that they are so unwilling to hurt innocents is truly commendable, even if it might come at the detriment of their own lives.

And come at the detriment of their own lives, it did, or at least for one of them. The zombified people grabbed Mikuru as she put herself in front of Eri and threw her into the lake's murky depths; please ignore that two of the zombies also fell in with her and how Nodoka—I mean a person whose name I don't know—started yelling about her outfit getting ruined, this is supposed to be a sad moment. I mean, just look at Eri. Her alleged teacher sacrificed herself to try and protect her, and she was helpless to do anything about it. It really tugs on the heartstrings, doesn't it?

"We can't stay here. We need to get her medical attention," was the stilted statement of Itsuki, who's apparently here now, I guess. Where did he even come from? He wasn't mentioned at all in the last few scenes, so it's weird that he just shows up out of nowhere to fish Mikuru out of the lake. Speaking of weird, Yuki and the zombified people appear to just be gone. Did they leave? They had the advantage, so why are they the ones who had to leave?

Well, when in doubt, cut to the next scene, I guess.

* * *

A feeling of dread permeates the air—oh my God. Despite saying that Mikuru needed medical attention, Itsuki seems to have brought her and Eri to what would logically be his house. With a dour expression, he lays her down on a mat; it's at this time that a person can see that Mikuru is now dressed in nothing but an oversized dress shirt, but please assume that Eri was the one to dress in that instead of anything not age appropriate happening.

"Is Nee-san g-going to b-be all right?" Eri asked.

"No. I've done all I can do, but it seems like the damage was too much to be fixed," Itsuki said, his delivery still being terrible.

"E-Eri…" Mikuru's haggard voice cut through the artificial tension.

"Nee-san!" Eri cried.

"R-Remember… everything I taught you… about justice…" We never saw anything of the sort. "I know that… things are bad right now… but just… just believe in the power of friendship. Just… do that and… and you'll find the light… just like I'm about to… Cough. Cough. Womanly fainting noises."

Mikuru closed her eyes and went lifeless. On the side, Eri started crying as much as one would expect a person to cry in this kind of situation, almost as if she was legitimately getting caught up in the intended emotion of the scene.

"Dammit!" Itsuki said, softly banging his fist against the floor a second later. "Why did this happen? What is even going on?" I want to know, too.

"I will explain it for you." Out of nowhere, Yuki appeared in Itsuki's windowsill. Is that because of magic or because of bad pacing? You decide. "Itsuki, you are in possession of dormant psychic powers capable of deciding the fate of the entire universe. I came to this planet to both awaken those abilities and convince you to side with me instead of this girl. I understand that you have a strong emotional attachment to her, but the fact of the matter is that she and the people she sides with are far too reckless. Allowing them to be in charge of the destiny of all living things is a mistake, and it will be much more beneficial to all if you allied yourself with a person who is able to think logically more often than not."

There it is, Yuki's _raison d'être_. That… Those are just her lines, right? I don't mean to go off script here, but she's not saying anything that's meant to have any bearing on real life, specifically a certain narrator's relationship with a certain director, right? No, I'm probably overthinking it. I have to be.

"I see. So what you are saying is that I am a key capable of opening a door to something bigger than myself," Itsuki said. "But a door is useless without a key, so if the key—by which I mean me—does nothing, than the door will forever remain closed. I understand your point, but as it currently stands, I do not see anything wrong with my current way of doing things. Is that because I think it's all for the best, or am I simply being selfish and not allowing myself to be open to other methods of operation? Hard to say, really. However, what I do know is that I am not currently in a position that would allow me to try something new, so for the time being, I must stick to the path I have laid out for myself."

Okay, that _had _to be metaphorical in some way.

"If that is your answer, then so be it. I will return to finish things, once and for all." It still doesn't make sense that she doesn't do it right now, but whatever. She's being dramatic or something, fine. The point is that Yuki left the building, and when she was gone, Eri—who was weirdly silent through all of that—gained a determined look on her face.

"I guess you have your work cut out for you, Eri," Itsuki said. "Do you think you can handle her?"

"I don't think I can handle her, I _know _I can handle her," Eri said.

Glad someone believes that.

* * *

What follows is a truly bizarre sequence of events. In spite of everything that just happened, Eri wasn't doing anything to prepare for her fight with Yuki. Rather, all she's doing is goofing off around town in a variety of ways: she's eating apple pie from a pastry shop; she's going shopping with an older man who looks like an insomniac; she's playing with another little girl and a cat; etcetera, etcetera. What happened to fighting Yuki? Is it just me, or is all of this a bunch of B-roll footage that's been thrown in to pad out the run time? That's what it feels like, at least.

Eventually, all of that came to an end, and Eri somehow ended up at a school that—for legal reasons—is most assuredly not U.A. While standing in a classroom that definitely wasn't Class 1-A, Eri found an envelope addressed to her. Upon opening it, she discovered that there was a letter inside that read, "It's time to end this."

"What's the matter, Eri? You have a pretty serious face on your look there," said the blonde man from earlier in the story. I guess he's not a zombie anymore. "I have never seen you look like this. Did you see a right winged news report or have your first period, or something?" Why was he made to say that to a child?

"The ultimate time of ultimate judgement has come, Mirio," Eri said. "For the sake of justice, I must do what I can to meet it and effortlessly crush evil, just like how nee-san taught me!"

Mirio laughed at that; very inappropriate, but not as inappropriate as his presence, in general. The two of them appear to be friends, but how and why? It seemed like the incident at the lake was their first time seeing each other, but there's nothing to indicate that they ever talked after that. Are we supposed to believe that they just became friends offscreen? The guy was partially responsible for Mikuru's death, so Eri shouldn't want to get along with him.

In spite of all of that, I guess we're just cutting to the next scene and moving on? Well, at least we're almost done.

* * *

While the letter gave no indication of where Eri needed to go, she miraculously found Yuki waiting for her on the roof. The wind was blowing her cape back as dramatically as it did when she first appeared, and for some reason, there was a cat on her shoulder. Probably not important.

"It's time to end this, Yuki!" Eri said. "For the safety of all mankind, and for the honor of my master, I will defeat you!"

"Square the fuck up, thot," Yuki said for some reason. Seriously, did no one think about how this kind of scene would look to an outsider? Whatever, the main takeaway is that their fight finally got underway. Eri fired off the same cheap-looking—but definitely powerful—energy blasts that Mikuru used, but Yuki effortlessly blocked them all. Yuki walked to Eri and tried to hit her with her wand, but Eri managed to block every strike, even though it looked like she was just flailing about at random. The two of them kept at it without end, even at the part where it seemed like a teacher came to reprimand certain people for using fireworks, and it was clear to everyone involved that the two were at a standstill. Not bad for someone who'd never done any fighting up until this point.

"This is just pathetic. Why are you dragging this fight out so much? You should have more than enough power to defeat a small child like this. Stop holding back and finish her off." All of that dialogue came from—of all people—the cat. Which, of course, has a perfectly logical explanation for it, one that will present itself at any moment.

"I am also a ventriloquist," Yuki said. There. That's the answer for that. Why else would a cat that previously exhibited no special abilities be able to talk if not because of something like that? Thinking anything else would be ludicrous, you know. "The cat who is actually me has a point. It is time for me to use deadly force."

Yuki held up her wand and pointed it at Eri. A soft ringing sound, coupled with an inexpensive flash effect, filled the area as Eri started to writhe with pain. I know that it doesn't really look like much, but trust me when I say that this is some truly deadly magic right here.

"N-No! I-I will not give up!" Eri said, slowly standing up off the ground. "N-No matter what kind of trouble comes my way, I-I will never give in, for I am the Burning Soldier of Lovely Chaos, Eri!" With the power of friendship probably, Eri resisted Yuki's attack and charged at her, her staff being swung around with reckless abandon. She tripped over a shoelace and fell flat on her face, but not before her staff grazed Yuki's leg. I say grazed, but in actuality, Eri had poured all of her power into that attack, and when the staff made contact with Yuki, that power was released in the form of a fiery explosion matching that of a nuclear bomb; that was displayed with a cheap, cartoonish effect, but please assume that the explosion was really that powerful.

"You did it, Eri! You defeated Yuki and saved the world!" With that kind of poor line delivery, it could only be Itsuki showing up out of nowhere. You'd think that he would have been involved in the climax in some way, but he wasn't even mentioned. Feels like this whole story could have happened without him.

"I knew you could do it, Eri!" Believe it or not, Mikuru was the one who said that. She's in a wheelchair, so despite what her last scene implied, it seems like she didn't actually die, but ended up crippled? How did that happen? And why did everyone act like she was dead if that wasn't the case?

The smile on Eri's face showed that she was going to ignore all of that—along with the bloody nose she got from her fall—so probably best for this narrator to do the same. The real takeaway was that the day was saved thanks to Eri.

Thank you Eri. You're a real Hero, and you're such a good girl.

* * *

"This story is a work of fiction. All character names, organizations, incidents and any other names and phenomena and such are fictional, as well; it's all made up. Even if it resembles someone, it's probably just a coincidence. Except for the commercials. Please shop at Sadara's Yummy Vegetables, Toshi Electronics, and Gunther's Guns for great deals! Stop by and buy!

"Wait, what? Again? This story is a work of fiction. All character names, organizations, incidents and any other blah blah blah, yada yada yada. Izuku, why am I saying all of this stuff? Who'd be dumb enough to think that any of this could happen in real life?"

* * *

With that, the projector sputtered out and the movie came to an end. Midoriya maintained the same mixture of emotion he had from the very beginning of the feature: shock, surprise, and indigestion. Going off of the faces of everyone in the room, it seemed like everyone was feeling something along those lines as well, Nagato and Koizumi being two exceptions.

"That was incredible, right?!" Naturally, Haruhi was a third exception. "I told you all we could it! When the SOS Brigade puts their mind to it, nothing is impossible! I can't wait to see the looks on everyone's faces at the culture festival!"

"So we're _really _going to show this to people?" Midoriya asked.

"Of course! How else is everyone going to see Eri-chan be both the Hero we need _and _the Hero we deserve? Come to think of it, the whole town's gonna want to see her in action, so we might as well start charging admission. I mean, every showing is definitely going to sell out, so I think it'd be plenty justified."

"Like anyone's gonna pay to see this crap," Bakugou said.

"Ha! You're just saying that because _you're _not in it."

"And why the hell is that? I spent ten hours helping you and Deku with this garbage, and you just cut out all my scenes!"

"A lot of stuff gets cut out in editing, that's how movies work, Bakugou. I don't know what to tell you other than be a better actor next time. Then again, considering the performance you gave, you'd probably have to wait for your next life to make that come to fruition."

"The fuck I will! Get the camera! I'm gonna act the shit outta you! Right here, right now!" The two of them kept at that, and it took all Midoriya had to just sit there and not try and laugh at it all.

Either way, the two of them were committed to helping out someone other than themselves, so at least that made it all worthwhile.

Hopefully.


	2. Brown Eyed Girl

_A long time ago, I learned that all people are not born equal. Our world is a world where the majority of people are born with a superhuman ability called a "Quirk," and a large number of those people use them to act as Heroes protecting innocents from danger, as if the reality of a manga or comic book has become the reality of real life. In the present day, eighty percent of the population has some kind of Quirk, which naturally means that the other twenty percent of the population doesn't possess a Quirk; those people are referred to as "Quirkless," and if you've been paying attention, you've already figured out that that's the category I fall into. _

_If there are about seven billion people on the planet, then that means the number of Quirkless people in the world is roughly 1.4 billion people. On the surface, that sounds like a lot, doesn't it? That's about as many people as you'd find in China or India, and those are the two countries with the highest populations in the world. The thing about those places, though, is that they have their 1.4 billion condensed into a single area. Imagine taking all of the people in one of those countries and trying to spread them out across nearly two hundred countries that are all spread out across six continents, and that's not even getting into things like small islands and sovereign states. I don't know the exact math, but just by thinking about it a little, it's clear that every place gets so few Quirkless people that you could go your whole life without meeting one. A Quirkless person doesn't have powers, yet their existence is the truly phantasmagorical one, and I somehow ended up in that rare breed._

_Earlier, I said that a large number of Quirk users go on to become Heroes, but most people never actually use their Quirks for anything special and just live normal, humdrum lives. There's nothing wrong with that because that's just what they chose to do, but when you're Quirkless, it feels like you're not given a choice, like you have to live an ordinary life because you're inherently inferior to your peers. I don't believe in that way of thinking, though. Ever since I was a child, I've loved Heroes as much as the next guy—probably even more—so of course I want to be one when I grow up. People always make fun of me for saying that, but I don't care. I have just as much right to be a Hero, to be someone who can save lives and put people at ease with a smile, as anyone else in this world, so I'm not going to stop trying just because people tell me to stop trying._

_Even still, that doesn't mean it's not hard to deal with, or anything. A person can only stay so strong in the face of adversity, and there are a lot of days when it just becomes too much to handle. I don't want to do something else with my life, but I wish I didn't have to go at it alone. I wish that I knew someone else in the same boat as me, that I could meet another member of the phantasmagorical species known as the Quirkless._

_Like that would ever happen, though._

* * *

The average day for Izuku Midoriya went as follows: he'd get woken up by his little sister ten minutes before his alarm was supposed to go off, he and his mom would cook breakfast for three—four on the rare occasions that his dad was home, he'd watch the news for any reports of All Might doing anything heroic, he'd go to school where Bakugou would pick on him before, during and after class, and then he'd shuffle on home as quickly as possible. That was the routine Midoriya had practiced for the past several years; it wasn't wholly ideal, but nothing had ever happened to make it seem like it could ever be changed, so bothering to try and do so wouldn't exactly benefit him in any way.

That was what he thought all the way up until a seemingly innocuous morning in May. Everything had been going according to his usual routine, from his little sister waking him up to Bakugou teasing him before class, but then their teacher surprised them with an announcement Midoriya hadn't heard in years: "We're having a new student join the class today." The teacher brought in the new student and revealed them to be a girl with long brown hair and a yellow headband with ribbons tied at its ends. Most of the class, especially the boys, were abuzz with excitement, but Midoriya didn't feel that way. The girl might have been objectively cute, but every time there was a new student, it didn't take long for them to jump on the "Let's bully Midoriya" bandwagon, so he wasn't exactly looking forward to having to deal with another tormenter.

"Okay, introduce yourself to the class and tell us three interesting things about yourself," the teacher said.

"Only three? Kinda arbitrary, but okay," the girl said. "My name is Haruhi Suzumiya. My family just moved here from Nishinomiya, and I hope we can all get along. I like to play the piano, my favorite Hero is Mirko, and… what else… oh yeah! I'm Quirkless."

Midoriya nearly fell out of his seat, and he wasn't the only one. The looks on everyone's faces made it clear that they had no idea how to process what had just been said; even the teacher looked completely thrown through a loop. Seeing more than one Quirkless person in your life was an oddity in and of itself, but for someone to so brazenly declare themselves as such was something else entirely, and she did it all with a smile on her face.

For a variety of reasons, Midoriya couldn't take his eyes off of that smile.

* * *

The idea of Midoriya being unable to take his eyes off of Haruhi wasn't simple exaggeration, as it turned out. All of the lessons of the day went in one ear and out the other; it was hard to get invested in long division when you've finally met someone just like you after seven years of being alone.

His observations, as thorough as they were, didn't end up telling him much about her, though. From what he could see, Haruhi was just a normal girl who answered questions just like any other girl and laughed like any other girl. That might have been why the other girls in the class were taking a shine to her in spite of her being Quirkless; even if Haruhi was basically an endangered species, the fact that she was fashionable and good looking meant that it was worth getting along with her. It almost made Midoriya wish he was born a girl.

"Gotta tell ya Ribbons, for a Quirkless chick, you're actually fitting in pretty well." Midoriya sank down in his chair as he saw Bakugou stomp over to Haruhi and the girls she was chatting with at lunchtime.

"Thanks I guess, whoever you are," Haruhi said.

"That's Bakugou. He's the toughest guy in class, and he'd be the coolest if it wasn't for his attitude," one of the girls said.

"Sure as hell wasn't talking to you!" Bakugou said before turning back to Haruhi. "Like I said, for a Quirkless chick, you're surprisingly not much of a pathetic eyesore. You're _way _better than Deku, that's for sure."

"Deku? Is he the guy who's been staring at me all day?" Haruhi asked. The girls threw out a bunch of "Ooo"s as Midoriya sank further into his seat. "He's Quirkless too?"

"Yeah, but he's nowhere near as cool as you are, Haruhi! It's like you're Filet Mignon and he's beef jerky, or something," one of the girls said, prompting a laugh from Bakugou and the rest of her group.

"I actually like both of those things."

"Well then you'd probably _love _hanging out with Deku, then. You'll get along like two Quirkless peas in a Quirkless pod!" They all started laughing again. Midoriya didn't know if there was really a God, but regardless, he was praying to something that Haruhi wouldn't take the bait and would just stay with her group.

"I don't know about that, but I might as well say hello." There shouldn't have been any doubt that no one would answer his prayers, yet Midoriya still found himself being surprised. Without any consideration for himself, Haruhi walked over to Midoriya and sat down at the desk next to his. "So I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that Deku isn't your real name?"

"N-No," Midoriya said. "M-My name's Izuku Midoriya. Deku's just a nickname. I-If you want to call me that—"

"Nah, Midoriya sounds better if you ask me," Haruhi said with a smile. Midoriya didn't hate the feeling it invoked in him. "You probably overheard, but I figured out that you were watching me pretty much from the get go."

"I-I didn't mean to! It's just that I've never met another Quirkless person before, so…"

"Hey, it's fine. Be happy about this; if I found out you were Quirkless some other way, I probably wouldn't have gone out of my way to talk to you." Somehow, Midoriya started feeling even worse about himself.

"R-Really? Why do you say that?"

"Just take a look at the peanut gallery over there." Haruhi pointed to Bakugou and the girls she was talking to a moment ago. They kept glancing at the two of them, and every time they did, they started laughing to themselves. "They probably think it'd be a real riot if the only two Quirkless people in the class became friends, like us being together doubles the material for their standup routine or something. If I knew from the start that you were Quirkless, then I wouldn't have talked to you because they would have expected me to talk to you, and why should I do something just because people want it to happen?"

"Isn't that what you're doing right now, though?"

"No, it's different. In my scenario, no one outright tells me to talk to you and it's just the general atmosphere that expects us to bond. Here, everyone's openly made their intentions clear, which means there's an open dialogue about how we should get to know each other because we're Quirkless. They still expect us to talk because we're both Quirkless, but if I didn't talk to you, then they'd just make jokes about how I'd refuse to talk to someone just like me, saying stuff like, 'Don't go thinking you're better than you really are!' or something. Either way, I get made the butt of someone's joke, and you probably end up in the crossfire. Make sense."

"I guess," Midoriya said, only a moderate amount of truth to his words. "So if it's a lose-lose situation anyway, why'd you pick this choice?"

"Well, I actually _did _feel like talking to you, so it was the lesser of two evils." Haruhi smiled at Midoriya again, and he got a vague idea of what sort of feeling it was invoking: genuine camaraderie.

* * *

Midoriya didn't remember what he ended up talking about with Haruhi, but he knew that it was a lot and was carried out through the rest of the day. Just as Haruhi predicted, most of the class was paying special attention to the fact that they were talking to each other, but it felt more manageable than the usual teasing he had to deal with. Just as Midoriya predicted, Haruhi was still pretty much a normal girl, but the fact that she was talking to him of all people was a miracle in and of itself, so he wasn't going to complain.

The next day, Midoriya and Haruhi met up at lunch again to talk about random stuff. Midoriya was slightly delayed by Bakugou taking another chance to pick on him for random stuff, and when he finally made it to the desk next to Haruhi, she had one of her eyebrows raised in a quizzical manner.

"You know, for someone who's supposed to be your friend, Bakugou sure treats you like crap," Haruhi said.

"I-I know that, Suzumiya-san, but it's more complicated than that," Midoriya said.

"What, is it some kind of S&M-type thing?" Naturally, Midoriya spat his food out all over his desk.

"Th-That's not it, at all!"

"Yeah, I know. That reaction was priceless, though." Midoriya didn't like that smile as much as the others.

"Look, I know that Kacchan's sort of kind of a big jerk, but we've known each other since we were little kids, so I know that beyond all of that, he's still a strong person who always succeeds at whatever he tries to accomplish. I-I've never really been good at anything, so I can't help but admire that."

"This reads like one of those manly man things that my lack of a Y chromosome apparently keeps me from understanding," Haruhi said.

"Is it? I don't really know much about those kind of things, myself," Midoriya said.

"Well, maybe it's one of those things where hate turns into love—or I guess love turns into hate and then back into love? I don't know. I don't really have any experience with this kind of stuff."

"Having friends?"

"Having bullies." Now it was Midoriya's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Most of these people, if not all of them, have been picking on you ever since you were diagnosed Quirkless, right? Well, I never had to deal with anything like that."

"Never?"

"I mean, there was always the occasional jerk who thought it'd be a riot to make fun of the Quirkless girl, but other than that, kids have always left me alone for the most part. I don't know why though." If Midoriya had to guess, he'd say that it was because her being an objectively cute girl superseded her being Quirkless, but he kept that to himself for a variety of reasons.

"I wish I had that kind of luck."

"I think it was less luck and more just making the right choices in life. Now that you got me around, you probably won't make the wrong ones any time soon, so you can be happy about that."

"Y-Yeah, I guess so." Despite the hesitation in his voice, he really was glad to hear that.

* * *

Midoriya and Haruhi kept having talks like that every lunch period for the rest of the week; for the first time in forever, Midoriya's routine was broken in even the slightest degree. They never talked about anything heavy handed or existential, just normal kid stuff like school, family, and who would win in a wrestling match between All Might and Mirko. It was all just normal kid stuff, nothing to get that excited about, but in Midoriya's defense, he couldn't remember the last time he got to do anything of the sort.

"Again, Suzumiya-san, All Might just completely outclasses Mirko in raw power, so there's no way for her to win," Midoriya said.

"Yeah, but her small size should give her an advantage, right? Not to mention all the mud making things slippery," Haruhi said.

"But that'd hinder Mirko as much as All Might, wouldn't it? Also, when did this become mud wrestling?"

"When I realized how great it would be to see those two duke it out while covered in mud. Don't tell me you've never at least thought about it for Mirko."

"Can't say that I have."

"Can't or won't?"

"Either or, I guess?" Midoriya asked with a shrug. He then caught sight of the clock and saw that lunch was nearly over, and with it being a Saturday—a half day—school would end alongside with it. "Suzumiya-san, do you have any plans for the weekend?"

"Why do you ask? You gonna feel lonely from not getting to see me for a whole day and a half?" Haruhi asked with a grin.

"I-I'm just curious, that's all!"

"Well, if you _must _now, my parents are actually taking me to see a baseball game after school today. It's my first time ever going to one, so I'm pretty excited about it." The smile on her face didn't leave any room for doubt. "You know, my aunt was supposed to come with us, but she got the flu and can't make it. We've got an extra ticket, so—I mean, if you're not busy with anything—"

Haruhi was interrupted by Bakugou slamming his hands down on their desks.

"You're sure getting chummy with Ribbons, huh Deku? Tell me, do Quirkless people like you have some kind of animal magnetism?" Bakugou asked.

"K-Kacchan, that's not—I don't know—"

"Obviously we don't. I mean, you're the biggest animal around, and neither one of us feels like hanging out with you," Haruhi said.

"The hell'd you just say?!" Bakugou shouted. A few onlookers laughed a bit at Haruhi's comment, and it took a great deal of willpower for Midoriya to not join in.

"Okay, as funny as it is to see someone talk back to Bakugou, you've been hanging out with Deku _way _too much," one of the girls in the class said.

"Yeah, it was kinda funny at first, but you should know that getting too close to that loser is only going to hurt you in the long run," another girl said.

"Says who? You? You're only telling me to stop hanging out with Midoriya because you got bored laughing about it behind our backs, so how much stock should I put into your words, anyway?" Haruhi asked.

"Ex_cuse _you?! Where do you think you get off, you little—"

"K-Knock it off! Suzumiya-san didn't do anything, so leave her alone!" Midoriya said. It wasn't like Midoriya to be so forceful with his emotions, but he wouldn't be able to sleep that night if he let Haruhi do all the fighting.

"Finally found some balls, did ya? Guess it's easy to act tough when it gives you a chance to play at being Hero. That's the only way a Quirkless loser like you could ever be one, anyway," Bakugou said.

"My dream has nothing to do with this, Kacchan. I-I just don't think any of you should make fun of Suzumiya-san when all she's doing is—"

"Are you stupid, or something?" Haruhi interjected. Midoriya turned to her with a look of confusion, a look that was matched by the rest of the people still lingering about in the classroom.

"S-Suzumiya-san?"

"What you were just talking about. You just said you wanted to be a Hero? Even though you're Quirkless?"

"Y-Yeah. So what?" Haruhi sighed and put a hand to her face.

"Are you kidding me? No wonder all these people make fun of you if you're talking about stupid stuff like that all the time!" For the first time in a while, everyone started laughing at Midoriya.

"M-Me wanting to be a Hero isn't stupid!"

"It is when you don't have a Quirk. Heroes and Villains alike tear up city blocks every other week like it's nothing, and you really think you could keep up with them without a Quirk of your own? Shouldn't you be smarter than that at this point in your life?" More laughter from their peers.

"I-I'm not an idiot—"

"Coulda fooled me!" Bakugou cut in.

"—I-I know that becoming a Hero without a Quirk is basically impossible, but why does that mean I shouldn't even try? I want to be a Hero just as much as Kacchan or anyone else, so don't I have the right to try?"

"Just because you have the right to something doesn't mean you should act on it, you know," Haruhi said. "If you want to help people that badly, try becoming a doctor or a firefighter or a police officer or something; those people save lives just like Heroes, and they're just as respected in the community."

"That's not the same! All of those people are too limited in what they can do to help, but a Hero is able to take action whenever they want and save hundreds of people because of that. That's why I want to be a Hero: so I can save as many people as possible and put a smile on their faces, just like All Might!"

"Yeah, just like All Might, the Symbol of Peace who _also _has a Quirk. Don't you hear how little sense you're making? It's always All Might this and All Might that with you, but I bet that if he were here right now, he'd tell you to give it up just like anybody else."

There had to have been more laughter from Bakugou and the rest of the class, but Midoriya didn't hear it. Haruhi's words were soft, yet it felt like they had the force of a pistol at his ear. As such, he was left deaf to the world, even when Bakugou got up in his face with what had to be taunts centered around what had just transpired.

Haruhi stood up and exited the room, not bothering to give him a second glance. Just like that, he was thrown back to zero.

* * *

Thanks to the severe blow to his morale, the weekend seemed to drag on forever for Midoriya, with him just going through the motions with as little effort as possible. When Monday came along, he didn't even struggle when his little sister woke him up too early; when he got to school, he barely even reacted to Bakugou's pre-class bullying. Things had gone back to normal, but none of it seemed to matter anymore.

A few minutes before class was supposed to start, the door opened again. Midoriya turned to it on instinct, and much to his displeasure—or maybe much to his disappointment—Haruhi walked in. His eyes didn't linger on her as much as they had the past few days, but they were there long enough for him to notice that she wasn't smiling like she had been since she first transferred in.

If there was a single emotion that could be used to describe her face, Midoriya would have gone with "melancholy."

* * *

Still caught up in the aftermath of how things went the previous week, Midoriya didn't join up with Haruhi for lunch, though it didn't look like she was even in the mood for it. Haruhi wore that melancholic look on her face all day, not even bothering to say a word. She didn't even pull out any food at lunchtime, just choosing to sit there and stare off into space. It was an odd thing to look at, but Midoriya didn't have it in him to pry.

Eventually, the end of the day came about. Midoriya collected his things and started heading for the door. In the corner of his eye, he saw Haruhi getting up, but her books and pencils were left scattered about on her desk. Not only that, but she didn't head in the direction of the door, she headed in the direction of Bakugou and his gang, who were still lying about in the back of the classroom.

Midoriya thought it was best to see where that was going.

"What do you want, Ribbons?" Bakugou asked. Haruhi said nothing. "What, you think you can just hang out with me while you and Deku are having your little fight? I got better shit to do than entertain your Quirkless ass, so quit standing there and spit it—"

Without a single iota of provocation, Haruhi punched Bakugou in the face and sent him flying into a bookshelf. Midoriya didn't know what was louder, the sound of Bakugou's impact or the collective sound of everyone's jaws dropping.

"What the fuck was that for?!"

"Emotional catharsis, that's what!" Haruhi said. "Want some more, 'cause I'm happy to provide!"

"I'll kill you, bitch!" Bakugou jumped at Haruhi, his Explosion Quirk at full blaze. He only grazed her a bit, and from there, the two of them devolved into a storm of fists that flew around the entirety of the room and destroyed everything in its path. It was the most ridiculous thing Midoriya had ever seen in his life, yet he couldn't bring himself to take his eyes away from it.

Either fortunately or unfortunately, their teacher quickly showed up to break up the fight, and Midoriya was allowed to think about how he had no idea what had just happened.

* * *

Midoriya was still upset with Haruhi. He still didn't want to talk to her, he still didn't know how to approach her, yet he still found himself waiting around after school for her to be done getting lectured by the principal. It was only an hour out of his day, but it had to be done.

"Surprised to see you here. Here I thought we were on the outs," Haruhi said the second she stepped out of the school.

"I-I know but… Hey, where are your parents?" Midoriya asked, hastily changing the subject.

"The principal wanted to talk to them and Bakugou's mom some more in private, so they told me to head to the car."

"W-Were your parents mad?"

"Oh yeah, livid even. Bakugou's mom seemed to take it in stride, though. According to her, I actually did a good thing by socking him in the face. Glad I got _someone's _approval."

"Y-You punched Kacchan in the face. How many people did you think would be okay with that?"

"Beats me. Probably you at least." Midoriya took in a quick breath. "Come on, he was asking for it. Don't tell me you weren't even a _little _happy to see that. For as much as you put Bakugou on a pedestal, it must have been amazing to see him get taken down a peg, right?"

Midoriya wanted to do nothing in response, but in spite of his better instincts, he found himself giving a weak nod.

"Even still, why did you do that, Suzumiya-san? Where did that come from? Did… Did something happen since the last time we talked?" Haruhi's expression became downcast, her melancholy magnified.

"Midoriya, have you ever thought about how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things? I've started doing that," was what Haruhi said in a single breath.

"What do you mean?" was all Midoriya managed to say in response.

"You know that baseball game I talked about going to? When I got to the stadium, I was shocked to see that it was filled with more people than I had ever seen in one place before. I could hardly take a step without bumping into someone, and the people on the other side of the stadium all looked like grains of rice from where I was sitting. I asked my dad how many people were at the stadium, and he said that since it was a sold out game, it was at least fifty thousand. Up until then, I never knew that a single place could even hold that many people.

"When I got home, I pulled out my calculator and started doing some math. I remembered reading once that the population of Japan was around one hundred million, so I divided that by fifty thousand, and you know what I got? Two thousand. That stadium was filled to capacity with thousands of people, yet they only amounted to one two-thousandth of all of the people in the country; if that was a fraction of a fraction, then that meant that I, a single person, was just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction."

A short breeze passed by and ruffled Haruhi's hair; it only served to emphasize the weight of her words.

"It was at that moment when it finally hit me: I'm not, nor have I ever been, anything special. I used to think that everything I do in my life was unique and helped make me my own person, from the way I tied up my ribbons to the way I'd get excited everytime Mirko appeared in the news, but that's wrong. If there are really so many people in the world that a packed stadium can be seen as a tiny statistic, then that means the things I think are so uniquely me are probably being done in the exact same way by someone else, and that someone probably thinks that it makes them special, too."

Another breeze came and went through Haruhi's hair. Midoriya just stood there in silence. He didn't know enough about the world to spout out any philosophies that she might find useful, and he couldn't come up with any comforting words that wouldn't be interpreted as patronizing. He didn't know what he could do to help her, but he knew that he wanted to, if only to get rid of that melancholic look on her face.

However, after a few seconds, Haruhi's melancholic look was replaced with one of frustration.

"It pisses me off just to even think about it! There are seven billion people on this planet, so they can't all be duds, right?! There has to be even a few interesting people in the world, so why wasn't I born as one of them?! Why Midoriya, why?!" Haruhi said all of that while stomping her foot against the ground with the speed and precision of a jackhammer.

"I-I don't know! I mean, I'm also just a nobody, so—"

"Yeah, you are a nobody! You're as boring and straightlaced as they come! If you opened up a dictionary and turned to the word 'milquetoast', there'd just be a big picture of you in there!" If that was Haruhi's attempt at cheering herself up, then he would have liked to suggest something else. "That fits you to a 'T', but you know what sets you apart from all the other nobodies? You're trying to _do _something about it! You can't live with being some average Joe for the rest of your life, so you're trying to be a Hero! After all, who's more interesting than a Hero, right?! And to think I thought you were an idiot for wanting to do that! If anything, _I'm _the idiot for even thinking of mocking you for it!"

If that was an apology, then Midoriya was willing to take it. More importantly, Midoriya couldn't help but feel like Haruhi was both wrong and right in her assessment of him. Midoriya really did want to be a Hero so he could help people, but he'd be lying if he said that a part of him wasn't in it for the glory, that a part of him wasn't aiming for it so he could be a person everyone looked up to. There shouldn't have been anything wrong with that. He spent over half of his life dealing with people trying to make him feel like he was nothing, so of course there was a part of him that wanted everyone to see him as something.

Midoriya kept all of that to himself; he was too distracted by Haruhi sticking a hand out with a smile on her face far wider than the previous ones he had seen, even if there was a hint of desperation in her eyes.

"Let's do it, Midoriya. You and me, let's show everyone that we matter. Let's let everyone in the universe know that we're here. Let's become the greatest, coolest, and most interesting Heroes in the world, Quirklessness be damned! How about it?!"

"Y-Yeah. Yeah. Yeah! Let's do it!" It was as if a wave of pure charisma had shot out of Haruhi and washed over him. A part of him might have just been going with the flow, but Midoriya could tell that the entirety of his being wanted to be on the same page as her, regardless of how much she might have been taking control of the conversation. There wasn't a single part of him that didn't want the same thing Haruhi wanted, so it wasn't at all surprising when he found himself shaking her hand in earnest.

* * *

_A person can only stay so strong in the face of adversity, and there are a lot of days when it just becomes too much to handle. I don't want to do something else with my life, but I wish I didn't have to go at it alone. I wish that I knew someone else in the same boat as me, that I could meet another member of the phantasmagorical species known as the Quirkless. When I was in sixth grade, on a day I would never forget, I had my wish granted in the form of Haruhi Suzumiya, a person I would never forget, and after a stumbling block or two, the two of us decided to support each other on our paths of becoming Quirkless Heroes._

_Little did I know that it was going to become far more complicated than anyone could have imagined for so, so many reasons._


	3. Quirkless Does Not Dream of Bunny Mother

_So at this point, the basic framework of my story with Haruhi should be clear: boy meets girl, girl crushes boy's hopes and dreams, girl punches friend of boy, boy and girl decide to work together to become Heroes, even if they're both Quirkless; when you put it into words, it's almost like something straight out of a movie._

_Haruhi's parents ended up being in the principal's office for a long time, so as much as I wanted to meet them, with how late it was getting, I decided to go home. My mom and my little sister wanted to know why I was home so late, but I just told them that I was hanging out with a friend, which wasn't a complete lie when you really thought about it. They both assumed that I was talking about Kacchan, but I didn't bother correcting them. I was too busy thinking about what Haruhi just did and what she might do tomorrow._

_I had a lot of thoughts about what Haruhi would do the next day, but it turns out that they were all wrong. Kacchan went after me the second I walked into the class, but Haruhi—moving like she had an EX ranking in Presence Concealment—was there to stop him before things could get ugly. The second that situation was diffused, though, Haruhi basically reignited it by announcing to the entire class that the two of us were going to become great Heroes in spite of being Quirkless, and anyone who had a problem with it could—well, that's not the kind of language I'm supposed to use around my sister, so I won't repeat it._

_Suffice to say that Haruhi didn't meet up with any of the girls from class that day. Every break between classes had her run straight to me, and lunch was the same thing. We generally kept talking about the same mundane stuff, but every meet up now had Haruhi talking about how we couldn't let everyone think we were just talk. We needed to show everyone that we could become Quirkless Heroes, and she had a "master plan" to do that. I asked her what it was, and she just told me not to worry about it and to leave it all to her, which probably meant that she hadn't actually come up with anything yet. _

_Nevertheless, she and I made plans to meet up on Sunday to do whatever she ended up coming up with before then, if anything at all. It was all so weird, but I'd be lying if I said that wasn't excited._

* * *

On a Sunday in early May, Midoriya, for once in his life, woke up early; so early that he stepped on the cold floor of his room the second his sister barged in to wake him up. The look on her face was a sight to behold, but he would have to save the beholding for the memory of the face. He had a big day ahead of him, he assumed.

Today was the day he and Haruhi were going to get started on becoming Quirkless Heroes. Truth be told, Midoriya still had no idea what, if anything, Haruhi had come up with. Whenever he asked her about it during the week, she said that it was a secret, which had him thinking that she was only saying she had a plan to cover up not having one at all. However, as Midoriya put on his jeans and his T-shirt with "Wifebeater" written on it, he realized that he would have been okay with that. Getting to hang out with Haruhi on the weekend—with anyone, really—was something to look forward to, so even if it didn't end up being serious, he could still enjoy himself.

"Well don't _you_ look happy, Izuku," his mom said to him. Before he knew it, he was at the kitchen table eating breakfast with his mom and little sister.

"D-Do I? I mean, do I look so happy that it's worth commenting on?" Midoriya asked.

"Yeah, you look like you're on fire, Deku-kun, and I didn't even hit you with my Quirk again!" said Midoriya's little sister, simultaneously bringing up a far too painful and far too recent memory. "You've been way too happy for a while now, but it's never been like this, so what gives?"

_Is it that crazy for me to be happy? _Midoriya thought. "Well, I'm actually going out with a friend today."

"Kacchan's coming over? Yay!" His little sister was practically jumping out of her chair.

"I-I didn't say—"

"That's so nice to hear, Izuku. You and Kacchan don't play outside of school that much anymore, so it's good to know that you're still good friends," Inko said.

"I-I mean, we aren't _not _friends, but I never said—"

"Mom, can Kacchan hit me in the face when he gets here?" Midoriya's little sister asked.

"You have to do it outside, and only if you eat everything on your plate," Inko said.

"Again, I keep trying to tell you two—" Midoriya was interrupted by the doorbell. Midoriya volunteered to answer it; if his family wasn't going to listen to him, then he didn't need to spend so much time around them. Even if it was just a salesman or an NHK subscription fee collector—which they had already paid for that month—at least they'd hold a conversation.

"Good morning world!" was how the person at the door greeted Midoriya. Far too energetic for a salesman or a fee collector. It only took a second for Midoriya to see that it was Haruhi dressed in jean shorts and an orange shirt with a panda logo on the chest.

"S-S-Suzumiya-san! What are you doing here?!" Midoriya asked.

"What do you mean? We agreed to meet up at your house today," Haruhi said.

"We agreed on noon; it's barely nine-thirty."

"Well, I got bored, so sue me." There were a lot of things Midoriya wanted to do, but that was low on the list.

"Izuku, who are you talking to?" Without him realizing it, Inko had made her way to the entrance to the apartment, his little sister closely trailing behind her. "Can we help you, Miss…"

"My name is Haruhi Suzumiya, and I've come to take possession of your son for the day, Mrs. Midoriya," Haruhi said. Why she phrased it like that, Midoriya had no idea.

"You're what? Wait, are _you _the friend Izuku is playing with today?"

"You mean Deku-kun has friends who aren't Kacchan?!" Midoriya's little sister asked.

"That's what I was trying to tell you two! Seriously, is it so crazy that I could hang out with someone other than Kacchan?" Midoriya asked. Everyone—even Haruhi—nodded their head at that. In retrospect, he did very easily walk into that one.

"Bakugou's old news, ma'am and adorable little child," Haruhi said. "I'm like New Coke, a bold new taste that'll make you forget all about the old brand!"

_Isn't that the exact opposite of what happened with New Coke? _Midoriya thought.

"Furthermore, please don't refer to what we're doing as 'playing'. After all, your son and I are about to embark on some serious training to become Quirkless Heroes!"

"You're what?" Midoriya couldn't get a perfect read on the look on his mother's face, but it certainly wasn't a happy one. People were talking about him being a Hero, so that made sense for her.

"Deku-kun, can I come with you and Suzumiya-san? I can blow you guys up if that'll help!" Midoriya's little sister said.

"Sorry kid, this is a private training session with me and your brother, but when we're done, I'll come back here and play with you all night long. Also, Suzumiya-san isn't cool, so just call me Haruhi," Haruhi said as she rubbed a hand through his sister's emerald locks.

"Yay! Haruhi, you're almost as cool as Kacchan!"

"Probably, but I don't have any intention of making my reputation go lower."

"_Any_way," Midoriya cut in. "As I said before, you're way too early. I mean, we can get started now since you're already here, but I need to help my mom clean up—"

"No, no, don't worry about it! Just-Just go out with your friend!" Inko said in a hurry.

"Really? Um, okay." With that, Midoriya quickly went to his room to grab his wallet, put on his red shoes, and left the apartment with Haruhi, his sister sending them off with a great deal of enthusiasm.

"Your family seems nice," Haruhi said as Midoriya closed the door behind him. "Especially your little sister. God, what a little cutie! She'd be a fifteen out of ten on the little sister scale if it weren't for that blind admiration of Bakugou." Midoriya wanted to know what this alleged little sister scale was measuring.

"It's not _blind _admiration; Kacchan actually gets along well with my little sister," Midoriya said, adding an "A lot better than he does with me" under his breath. "He treats her like the little sister he never had, probably because they have similar Quirks."

"Really? What can she do?"

"Well, my mom has telekinesis and my dad can breathe fire, so those combined to give her a specialized form of pyrokinesis. The way it works is that she absorbs the kinetic energy of anything that hits her—simultaneously reducing the damage to virtually nothing—and when she's built up enough of it, she releases it in the form of a fiery explosion."

"That's so cool! So _that's _what she was talking about when she said she could blow us up! Come to think of it, dealing with something like that _could_ be beneficial for our training."

"Please don't. My feelings about my little sister being used as a dumbbell aside, she still doesn't have great control over her Quirk. Didn't you notice that the door to our apartment looks completely different from every other door in the complex?"

"Come to think of it, I guess it would be weird for that to be a fashion statement, at least with that paint job. But you know, we can go house hunting later. Let's get the first day of the rest of our lives started!" Haruhi enthusiastically pumped her fist into the air.

"Y-Yeah." Midoriya pumped his fist into the air with comparatively less enthusiasm. It was good to hear that there actually was a plan, but the fact that he still had no idea what it was was less than ideal.

* * *

Since the whole operation was Haruhi's idea, she naturally led the charge. She escorted Midoriya to the train station where they rode the first train for two stops before getting off at Koyoen Station. From there, she grabbed him by the wrist—an act that left Midoriya looking like a tomato—and pulled him through the crowds of people until they ended up at a mostly empty park. Midoriya noticed that for someone who had only been living in Musutafu for a couple of weeks, Haruhi exhibited a great deal of familiarity with that part of the city. He suspected that she brought him to her neighborhood, but he didn't ask about it; he was too busy thinking about what Haruhi had planned for them.

"Okay, where did I put it?" Haruhi asked as she walked through some bushes. "I think it was—ah! Here it is!" Haruhi jumped out of the bushes and placed a large cardboard box filled with what looked like meaningless junk in front of him.

"Suzumiya-san, what is this?" Midoriya asked.

"A box of scraps." He was close enough.

"And what is it for?"

"Simple: you're gonna build something!" Haruhi looked very proud of herself for saying that, but Midoriya had no reason why that was.

"B-Build something? What do you mean? What do you expect me to build with this?"

"Whatever you want. Think of yourself as DaVinci and this box as your canvas and make whatever you want. Try to make something that can fly and shoot lasers, though."

"Um…" There were many forms of protest Midoriya wanted to offer for many obvious reasons, but the look Haruhi was giving him made it clear that nothing like that would work. Not knowing what else to do, Midoriya started digging through the cardboard box. Sure enough, it was filled with things like batteries, magnets, circuit boards, jumper cables, and random pieces of metal. As far as tools went, there was a hammer, a box of nails, a tube of Gorilla glue, a roll of duct tape, and a blow torch. It didn't take the genius Haruhi expected Midoriya to be to see that she had a limited understanding of what went into crafting technology.

Almost immediately, Midoriya put the blow torch to the side; he didn't care what Haruhi had to say—which was, fortunately, nothing—that was too dangerous to use. That being said, Midoriya didn't have an inkling of what he was supposed to do with the other tools just because they were safer to use, so he just started doing stuff at random. The random pieces of metal were the only things that looked safe to nail, but they were all too thick for the nails to go through, so the hammer quickly became useless. As useless as they were in a practical sense, the glue and the duct tape ended up being the only tools he both could and wanted to use, so he spent the next twenty minutes or so sticking everything together in various ways until he ended up with an abstract artist's interpretation of a robot.

A gentle breeze blew by, and the monstrosity fell apart at the seams.

"Seriously, what do you expect me to do?" Midoriya asked. "I-I know I get good grades and that I like to take notes on Heroes, but I'm not a super-genius or anything!"

"Yeah, I pretty much assumed it would go like this," Haruhi said as she started shoveling the junk back into the box.

"Y-You did?"

"Of course. Like you said, just because you're smarter than some of your peers doesn't mean it'd make sense for you to be a super genius. I'm actually glad that you saw a bunch of junk and couldn't make something super cool out of it. After all, if you were smart enough to make the kinds of gadgets and gizmos that people like Batman or Iron Man fight with, then it'd kind of make it hard to say that you're gonna be a Hero who doesn't have powers. That kind of intelligence would make anyone superhuman, so claiming that you're Quirkless when you also have that going for you is just kinda lazy, you know?"

"I guess? Maybe? Wait, if you didn't want me to be able to invent something from garbage, then why did I go through that at all?"

"Because I had to be sure, obviously. You don't want to spend your whole life wondering what could have been, do you?" Haruhi was the only one who had any of those thoughts, but Midoriya decided to keep that obvious fact to himself. "Now that that's out of the way, we can get on to the real master plan. If we stick to this, we'll become Heroes in no time!"

"What's the plan?"

"The plan…" Haruhi paused, looking like she was listening to an imaginary drum roll. With all of the build-up, it had to be something good. "The plan is to do 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and ten kilometers of running every single day!"

There were no words; every attempt at them on Midoriya's part failed miserably.

"Stunned silent, eh? Not surprised. It's a pretty great plan if I don't say so myself."

"S-Suzumiya-san, is your plan just having us copy something from a manga?" were the words Midoriya uttered when he regained the ability to speak.

"Of course not." Midoriya breathed a sigh of relief. "We're skipping the parts about not using an air conditioner and only having a banana for breakfast. The last thing I need is to be a bald fourteen-year-old girl, after all." The sigh was sucked back inside.

"Suzumiya-san, that's completely ridiculous! Are you going to tell me with a straight face that this is what we should be doing? I thought we were _both _serious about this!"

"Hey, I'm just as serious as you! Since we don't have Quirks, we need to at least have tough bodies to beat up Villains with, so why not do something that guys on Youtube show actually works?! Besides, it's not like _you _came up with anything." Haruhi made a pout with her last comment, and as the sight of that was burned into his memory, Midoriya conceded that she had a point. Haruhi's idea might have been too stupid for his liking, but between the two of them, she was the only one who had an idea, so he couldn't really justify complaining.

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"You should be. I know I'm just copying someone else, but it still took me a while to think of this." As Haruhi spoke, she removed her headband and tied it around the back of her hair to give herself a ponytail.

"L-Let's do it!" For reasons Midoriya was too young to understand, the sight of that filled him with a great deal of energy.

* * *

Haruhi's Spartan-like training was just as aggravating as Midoriya feared it would be. Much to his own surprise, the push-ups didn't completely destroy him in his effort to complete them, but he was starting to feel a noticeable strain in the middle of the sit-ups. By the time he had forced out thirty squats, his body felt like it had been turned into brittle glass, and by the time he—by some incredible stroke of fate—completed the arbitrary set, he fell to the ground and let out a series of heavy pants.

"Come on, Midoriya! Are you really winded after just that little bit?" Haruhi asked. All of the physical exercise was a pain in and of itself, but what made it worse for Midoriya was how Haruhi was somehow going through it all while barely breaking a sweat.

"It's like you're a perpetual motion machine or something," Midoriya said between haggard breaths.

"Hey, even I have my limits, it just takes me a lot longer to reach them than it does you apparently. Don't you feel even a little shame from being so blatantly outdone by a girl?"

"I'm pretty sure all of this agonizing pain is superseding that."

"Pretty convenient excuse, if you ask me." Haruhi kneeled towards Midoriya, who was still lying motionless on the grass. "Still, it's weird that you fell apart so easily. Feeling exhausted is one thing, but you should still be able to stand just fine. Do you not exercise or something?"

"I mean… I don't _not _exercise." While Midoriya certainly put more stock in brains than he did brawn, it wasn't as if he never did anything to stay in shape. He was never the type of person to find a reason to sit out gym class, and whenever he went to the country to visit his cousins during the summer, he always joined them on their hikes through the woods. He wanted to feel proud about doing at least that, but the second he tried, he remembered that just getting dead last in everything at gym still left him exhausted and that his cousins always had to cut their collective pace in half so he wouldn't get left behind.

"Midoriya, I want total honesty from you. Before I came into your life, what, exactly, _was _your plan for becoming a Hero?" Midoriya couldn't say anything; unfortunately, it wasn't from a lack of trying. The picosecond the question hit his ears, he racked his brain to try and come up with a response, but nothing came to mind. Even though he was Quirkless, even though Bakugou was always telling him he couldn't be a Hero, he never gave up on that dream, but now that Haruhi had brought it up, he never actually did anything in the pursuit of that goal. At the very least, he could have kept in shape a bit or learned how to throw a punch, but he never even thought about doing anything of the sort.

"I'm such an idiot," Midoriya said. "I kept talking about being a Hero, but I never did a thing to try and make it happen, even though I've always been ten steps behind everyone. What, did I think I could just stumble my way into U.A., or something? What is wrong with me?"

"I don't know if anything's wrong with you _per se_, but if you ask me, all you've been lacking is the proper motivation. Saying that you want to change might be a walk in the park, but actually making the effort is a completely different story, especially when you're going at it alone. Lucky for you, you've got yourself a pretty good co-author, one who's not afraid to jab you with a pen if you start slacking off. I hope I don't have to keep reminding you, but we're in this together, got it?"

Haruhi was smiling at him again; down from where Midoriya was, the sun and her smile looked to be one and the same.

"Got it." Midoriya found himself filled with newfound energy and stood up off the ground. Without saying a word to Haruhi, he got started on the final phase of their training, though he quickly heard a laugh and footsteps from behind him. Haruhi might not have been a perpetual motion machine, but with her behind him, Midoriya felt like he could easily become one.

Two seconds after completing one kilometer of running, Midoriya collapsed to the ground.

* * *

At some point, Midoriya awoke to the sight of an unfamiliar ceiling. When he shot up, he saw an ice pack fall off his head and a colorful blanket fall off of his body. With every passing second, it was becoming abundantly clear that he was no longer in the park, but he still had to figure out where he now was and, most importantly, where Haruhi was.

From a general survey of the area, Midoriya saw that he was in what looked like a living room—it was at that time when he noticed that he had been lying on a couch. The coloring of the walls and rug were moderately pleasing to the eye, and the state of the plasma screen TV, foreign oil paintings, and various other furnishings—including the aforementioned couch—suggested a reasonable amount of wealth on the part of the owner. Nice to know that money wasn't a problem for his possible kidnappers.

"Oh, you're awake. Another hour and I would have started to get worried." The person talking to Midoriya was a svelte adult woman with long dark hair who walked into view with barely a click from her heels. Something about the woman looked familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it, even with how much time he spent looking at her face. Midoriya was always good at making eye contact with people, but he found it especially easy to do that with her because he felt too uncomfortable looking at her body, on account of her being dressed like a playboy bunny, for some reason.

_A-Am I in Holmby Hills?! _Midoriya thought.

"Wait, you look red. Did I speak too soon?" asked the bunny girl. "No, it's the bunny girl outfit obviously. Prepubescent boys are always so adorable."

"Careful there, honey. It's stuff like that that gets you on some kind of list." A new person decided to join in on whatever it was that was happening. This person was a brown-haired man with an emotionless expression; just like the bunny girl, something about his face seemed familiar, and the reason he came to that realization was from him being too nervous to look at the pink apron that had "Violate the Chef" written on it.

"W-W-W-Where am I?!" Midoriya asked, his body shaking like a leaf.

"Calm down. You're probably in good hands," said the man in the apron. Midoriya started shaking even more.

"Why did you say 'probably'?" the bunny girl asked.

"I can't see the future. Who's to say something terrible won't happen to him?"

"Hey, so I was looking for a good nurse's outfit to put on, but the pink one still has that curry stain from Nodoka's birthday party, and the only white one I can find is my _Yu-Gi-Oh _cosplay. Any idea where—Midoriya, you're alive!" To make things more confusing, the third person to enter the scene was the familiar face of Haruhi, her hair hanging out of a ponytail and hanging loose once more; Midoriya found that disappointing, for some reason.

"S-S-Suzumiya-san, what's going on?! Where are we?! Why are we in a weird place with weird people?!"

"What? Oh, what did you two say to him?"

"Nothing that requires censorship, at the very least," the bunny girl said.

"That's not the only hurdle you need to jump, you know!"

"Agree to disagree," said the man in the apron. Haruhi pouted at him the same way she did at him earlier—however long ago "earlier" was. It soon became rather obvious where he was and who these people were in relation to Haruhi.

"Suzumiya-san, a-are these your parents?"

"Yeah, for better or worse," Haruhi said. With that confirmed, that meant he had to be in Haruhi's house. Her house looked rather nice, he found himself musing.

"U-Um, nice to meet you both! T-Thank you for allowing me into your home!" Midoriya stood up and gave a series of quick bows.

"No need to be so formal. We're just happy to finally get a chance to meet _the _Izuku Midoriya. Our daughter talks about you a _lot_, after all," said the man in the apron.

"Shut _up_, Dad," Haruhi spat.

"Anyway, if we're giving out introductions, I'm Sakuta Suzumiya, father of one, loyal househusband, Mai-san's fantastic lover—"

"Neither the time nor the place," said the bunny girl as she flicked Sakuta in the forehead. "I'm Haruhi's mother Mai Suzumiya. I'm an actress, so you might know me under my maiden name of 'Tadamichi'."

"Tada—Oh wow! You're Mai Tadamichi! I thought that you only looked familiar because you share various facial features with Suzumiya-san, but you'd have to be living under a rock not to know Mai Tadamichi! Every show you star in tops the ratings for the week it airs, every movie you appear in is number one at the box office opening weekend, and every Twitter feud you get in ends in your complete and utter victory!"

"You sure are good at talking," Sakuta said.

"Even that outfit you're wearing has to be from your new show, _Lapis Lagomorph, the Bunny Girl from the Fifth Dimension_! Tell me, the bunny girl costume is meant to highlight Lapis' struggle to find a balance between her new life on Earth and the memories of her original world, right?"

"No, the director just wanted to put a girl in a bunny girl costume," Mai said.

"Which, of course, makes it the best show ever," Sakuta said.

"I-I mean, it's not like I only watch it for that, so—wait, how did we get to talking about this? What am I even doing here?" Midoriya asked.

"Well, after we barely got any running in, you collapsed like a sack of potatoes, so I brought you back to my house and called my parents for help. It was a good thing we were doing our training in my neighborhood; it would have been torture to try and lug you onto a train," Haruhi said. "They brought a doctor over, and he said that you just fainted from exhaustion and you'd be fine with some bed rest, so there wasn't any need to take you to a hospital."

"O-Oh. That's good, then."

"Don't let our daughter's tone fool you. When she called us, she was crying her heart out about how she needed us to 'move Heaven and Earth, and Hell too, while we're at it' to save her little friend," Sakuta said.

"I was _not _crying! Look at my face; there is definitely a dry eye or two in the house!" Haruhi said.

"I find that hard to believe. After all, the sound of my adorable baby girl in tears is the only thing that can get me to leave work early," Mai said.

"Mom!"

"That reminds me, I need to change out of this." Mai gave a quick bow as she stepped out of the room, Haruhi glaring at her the entire time.

"Midoriya, you're ignoring everything these two say about me, you got it? It's complete nonsense, so there's no point in listening to it! Besides, even if I was crying—which I wasn't!—it would have been totally justified! Can you imagine the bad press I'd get if my partner died on our first day of working together? There's no way I'd want to deal with something so annoying, so if anything, _you_ should be apologizing for almost making that my reality!"

"I-I don't really get what you're trying to say, but if it'll put an end to all of this, then I'm sorry," Midoriya said.

"Next time, don't push yourself too hard because you get caught up in my daughter's charismatic stupidity," Sakuta said. "That training you're doing is fine enough, but remember to bring food and water with you. You also don't have to do everything in one go, so if you feel winded, take a break. It'll all even out in the end."

"Yeah, I _guess _that'd be the best way to handle it," Haruhi said.

"Atta girl." Something about the scene seemed strange to Midoriya. Fortunately, it only took him a second to figure out what it was.

"Suzu-No, Saku-Wait, that's also—"

"Sakuta's fine. Unless, of course, you think you're man enough to call my daughter by her first name."

"Sakuta-san!" Midoriya said without hesitation. Haruhi seemed to roll her eyes at that, but he elected to ignore that. "Um, so you don't have a problem with Suzumiya-san and me trying to become Heroes? Even though we're both Quirkless?"

"Hm? Yeah, I guess. I mean, Mai-san and I aren't exactly taking it in stride," Sakuta scratched his chest for a second, "but we don't see why you can't do it; not like having a Quirk automatically makes it a safe job, after all. Either way, Haruhi being Haruhi should more than make up for that, and since you're going to be spending a lot of time together, that'll probably rub off on you."

"Oh, it'll definitely rub off on him. We're in this for the long haul, after all," Haruhi said. She gave him that same smile she liked giving him, the one that said, "If you just shut up and follow me, everything will be fine." If Midoriya was being honest, he had no reason to believe that that wasn't the truth. "So Dad says that one of us losing consciousness automatically ends training for the day—"

"As it should," Sakuta said.

"—so he's gonna take you home, but… as it turns out, you just happened to wake up at around noon, so we might as well take advantage of the timing and let you have lunch with me—_us_ before you have to go home."

"Y-Yeah, okay," Midoriya said.

"Better be okay."

"Ah, how nostalgic," Sakuta said with a grin.

"No, it's not!" Haruhi said. Midoriya didn't understand what he was getting at.

"I don't know if you have the authority to decide that when the only thing you can be nostalgic for is baby food. If you want, we can have that for lunch instead," Mai said, returning to the room in normal and stylish clothing.

"That's not what I'm saying!"

"Oh, Mai-um, Suzumi-Tadamichi-san! You forgot to take off your ears," Midoriya said.

"No, I didn't, these are real. Want to touch them?" Mai asked, the apparently real bunny ears wiggling about.

"Oh, so it's okay for him to touch them, but not me?" Sakuta asked.

"Yes, because there's a difference between touching and groping."

"I prefer to call it caressing."

"Caress something else."

"Don't worry, I will."

"Let's just eat, okay?!" Haruhi said. She grabbed Midoriya by the wrist and pulled him into the kitchen, something Midoriya couldn't stop himself from smiling at.

After all, even if Haruhi thought her parents were the most embarrassing people on the planet, at least they supported her.

* * *

After a lunch consisting of ham sandwiches and mineral water, Sakuta and Mai drove Midoriya back to his apartment, Haruhi tagging along to keep her promise of playing with Midoriya's little sister. Sakuta had to run some errands and Mai had to shoot a commercial, so they couldn't come in to meet Inko, but they told Midoriya to tell her they said hi. Sakuta then gave Midoriya a list of protein and health supplements he could take to help increase his performance before he and Mai drove off to go about their business.

"I'm home," Midoriya said when he and Haruhi walked inside the apartment. Inko was sitting at the kitchen table, the confusing look from earlier in the day still plastered on her face.

"Hi, Deku-kun! Hi, Haruhi! Let's play!" said his little sister, coming in like a wrecking ball.

"You got it, kid!" Haruhi said. "Midoriya, after we're done playing, let's try and alter the plans a little bit so there's less chance of you dying."

_That probably should have been a factor from the start_, Midoriya thought.

"Also, now that I think about it, we should get a martial arts teacher. You know, someone to teach us stuff like wrestling, aikido, and maybe a little Bartitsu, while we're at it." Midoriya didn't think that they would have to fight Moriarty anytime soon, but he kept that to himself. Haruhi chased after his little sister as she ran into her room, but before Midoriya could follow with comparatively less enthusiasm, his mother asked him to sit down.

"Is something wrong, Mom?" Midoriya asked.

"N-No, nothing's wrong! It's just that…" Inko looked down at the table for a second before taking a long breath. "Izuku, I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

"Sorry for… for only being sorry all those years ago, I mean."

"All those—oh. O-Oh." Now it was making sense.

"You-You just had your dream shattered before you even had a chance to live it, and instead of trying to make you feel better, all I did was try and push you further away from it. You never gave up trying, and every time I heard you say you still wanted to be a Hero, all I could feel was regret for not saying what you wanted to hear. I'm sorry, Izuku. I'm so, so sorry."

"Mom, please! Stop it! Y-You don't need to apologize! It's not…" "It's not your fault I was born like this," was what Midoriya almost said, but he managed to stop himself; she didn't need to hear that, and he didn't need to say that. "Why are you saying all of this now, of all times?"

"Because of Haruhi." Naturally. "When she said that you two were going to try and become Heroes in spite of being Quirkless, I felt happy that you had a friend who wanted to stand by you, but at the same time, I felt sad that a little girl was offering the kind of support that I, your mother, never even tried to. I-I don't want to be like that anymore, so… I want you to know right here and now that I'm going to support you every step of the way!"

"Mom, I… thank you." In the presence of the words he waited over six years to hear, that was all Midoriya could bring himself to say; his tears did the rest of the talking.

"Midoriya, Midoriya! Look at this!" Cutting through the tension of everything that just happened was Haruhi. Midoriya didn't object to it; with how serious his mother had gotten, he welcomed a little bathos.

That sentiment died the second he saw Haruhi hit his little sister in the head with a baseball bat.

"Why?!" Midoriya asked.

"Because it's fun!" Haruhi said as she hit her again. "I thought you exaggerating, but she really doesn't feel a thing. This is so much fun!"

"I'm invincible!" his little sister said. Haruhi hit her in the head a third time, and after the hit landed, her body started glowing a bright green.

Twenty minutes later, Inko took Midoriya, Haruhi, and his little sister with her to a department store to buy a new table to replace the one that was just blown up.

* * *

_So that was how my first day training with Haruhi ended: not with a whimper, but with a bang; not like Haruhi would have wanted it any other way, of course._ _We didn't actually get a lot done, and you'd think that me passing out from exhaustion would make it a total failure, but it wasn't. I got to meet Haruhi's parents, I got to see Haruhi in a ponytail, and best of all, I got to feel the full force of my mom's love and support._

_I'd like to see someone _not _count all of that as a win._


	4. Sybil

_After passing out on the first day of our training, Haruhi and I worked together to improve her quote-unquote Master Plan. Since it really was just basic exercise, there wasn't all that much that needed to be done, so we just took her father's advice to heart and put breaks between everything—Haruhi originally wanted the breaks to only be a minute long, but I succeeded in getting her to use logic and make them at least five minutes._

_Obviously, taking a few breaks didn't make all of that training a walk in the park, but at the very least, it became something that was actually manageable. The supplements that Haruhi's father suggested I take helped a lot, too. I could actually feel my endurance going up, and before I knew it, I was able to keep to the program without even feeling like collapsing. Of course, even with that, I was never able to keep up with Haruhi; she says that she's never done any serious exercise before now, but that has to be a lie. For the sake of my pride, that just has to be a lie._

_So yeah, training was going pretty well. Good enough for me, at least. Haruhi, however, made her dissatisfaction apparent to the world, and it existed for one reason that she was rather hung up on._

* * *

"We need a martial arts teacher!" Haruhi said one June afternoon.

"So you've told me at least once a day for the past month and a half," Midoriya said as he went through his lunch.

"Because it's important! No matter how strong we might get from all of our training, it won't mean anything if we can't throw a punch, and I can only learn so much from the net and the library, which is why we need to find someone who can teach us how to do that!"

"I know that, but it's not like we haven't found someone from a lack of trying so much as we haven't found someone because of your crazy standards."

"I do _not _have crazy standards." Midoriya put down his chopsticks and gave Haruhi his full attention.

"Suzumiya-san, when we went to Gunhead's martial arts studio, you got so frustrated that you called him a weird-talking dork and got us kicked out."

"I had every right to get mad at him. He was only teaching us how to do grapples, but you can't just grapple your way out of everything. Heroes are supposed to be more well-rounded than that."

"And what about that other place where we met that girl with the big hands Quirk? We could have learned some good karate and kung-fu there, but you kept complaining about how boring it all was."

"Because it _was _boring! Knowing just karate and kung-fu is played out, and I refuse to be walking cliche. Besides, I didn't like that girl's hair."

"It was just a ponytail. Nothing wrong with that." Without warning, Haruhi grabbed Midoriya's bento and shoveled the rest of his lunch into her mouth. "I guess I'm done eating."

"Look Midoriya, all those places we went to didn't work because they were too one-note. If we want to make it as Quirkless Heroes, we're not going to get anything done until we know ten million techniques!"

_After that, are we going to Spain to find someone with a power level of ten million? _Midoriya thought.

"Don't look at me like that. You think we'll be able to shut up people like Bakugou if we limit ourselves to what any person can do?" Haruhi made Midoriya turn his head to the left, which just happened to be right in Bakugou's direction. Bakugou might have been picking on him less since he and Haruhi had their fight, but their relationship was hardly cordial, so it was no surprise that Bakugou threw a scowl at Midoriya until he turned back around.

"What are you even looking for, then?"

"Someone who can teach us everything the world has to offer! Someone who throws caution to the wind and throws every crazy book at us until we're the best of the best of the best! If we can't find a teacher like that, then there's no point in even giving someone the benefit of the doubt, Midoriya. No point at all!"

At that moment, lunch was over and the next class was going to start. Midoriya breathed a sigh of relief, for that meant that he wouldn't have to struggle to try and continue the conversation. While going outside the box to learn how to fight wasn't a bad idea, her standards were too high to do anything more than impede on any and all progress. He, better than anyone else, understood what Haruhi was feeling, but they weren't going to get anywhere if they had to keep moving in accordance with her random whims.

After all, just because Haruhi wished for something didn't mean that she was going to get it.

* * *

Once school ended, Haruhi dragged Midoriya to the park so they could get in their training for that day. As soon as that concluded, Midoriya went back to his apartment and allowed his aching body to collapse onto his bed. It only took half an hour for him to stop feeling exhausted; a new record. From there, Midoriya went about his usual routine—doing his homework, having dinner, playing with his sister, the works—all the while thinking about what might happen if Haruhi's wish for a polymath-esque martial arts teacher. Haruhi might have just been a kid, but she had the ferocity of a full-grown adult, so there was no telling what might happen if she reached her limit. Such thoughts stuck with Midoriya up until his evening bath, and they were only interrupted because they collided with something equally confusing.

"Hey, get out of here!" Namely, his little sister barging into the bathroom.

"But Deku-kun, your phone was ringing and I answered it and they wanted to talk to you and it's a girl!" his little sister said, giggling like a mad clown.

"I'm still in the bath! And what are you doing answering my phone, anyway?" She just shrugged her shoulders.

"Anyway, here you go!" Midoriya's little sister tossed him his phone. Despite some fumbling on his part, Midoriya managed to catch it and prevent himself from getting electrocuted. Naturally, his sister had already bolted before he could properly reprimand her.

"Always doing whatever she wants; no wonder Kacchan likes her so much. Who's calling so late, anyway? Suzumiya-san? Aunt Rika?" The caller ID said "Unknown Caller." Midoriya hoped that his little sister hadn't interrupted his bath so he could talk to a telemarketer. "Hello?"

"Hello?" the other person repeated like a parrot. It really was a girl, though if Midoriya had to guess, it sounded more like she was a young woman.

"Um, who is this?"

"It's me. M-E. Me!" That was hardly an answer. "Oh, are you in the bath right now? Sorry about that. Want me to call back later?"

"N-No, that's okay. Can you just tell me who you are, please?"

"Now where would be the fun in that? I'm sure you'll learn it one of these days, but it doesn't need to be today."

"What? What are you—why did you even call me?"

"If I'm being honest, I just wanted to hear the voice of the boy with the inspiring dream. That's all this is."

"What?" Midoriya almost dropped his phone right into the water. He only ever had one dream, and not only were there only a handful of people who thought it was inspiring, the only thing that handful of people had in common was that they were people Midoriya knew. There was no reason for a strange woman to be commenting on it in any way, shape or form.

"We're probably gonna meet up in the future, so thanks for going along with me in advance. I hope we get along so well that we get to finish each other's sandwiches! Buh-bye!"

"Wait, hold on!" The line went dead. It appeared that in addition to being mysterious and foreboding, the woman he just talked to was also incredibly rude. The proverbial icing on the proverbial cake, as it were.

_What am I supposed to do with this? _Midoriya asked himself. _There's no number listed, so it's not like I can track this woman down. If I told my mom, she'd just start to worry, and if I told Suzumiya-san… I don't want to think about what she might do. _With that in mind, Midoriya opted to keep the conversation to himself.

He really hoped that it wouldn't come back to haunt him.

* * *

The rest of the week carried on as normally as it could. Haruhi kept nagging Midoriya about how they needed to find a martial arts teacher, and Midoriya just kept nodding along to that, as there was little else that he had the power to do. The only thing that made it different was him having that mysterious phone call locked in his mind. He still had no idea who that person was, and because she only said that they would meet in the future, that meant she could show up at any time. Once that thought came about, Midoriya couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched, that people were hiding in the shadows observing his every move. He wanted to say something, but he knew that he couldn't tell anyone about what was probably just a prank call and not have it all spiral out of control, so there was nothing to do but grit his teeth and bear it.

Eventually, the weekend came about, and with two full days off from school, Haruhi showed up at Midoriya's door early Saturday morning to drag him to the park for training.

"You're hiding something, aren't you?" Haruhi asked as they boarded the train.

"Excuse me?" Midoriya asked.

"You've been acting really weird these last few days, and I'm sick of it. You better tell me what's wrong, or I'm gonna work you so hard today that your bones turn to dust."

"What makes that different from any other day?"

"Just fess up, already!" That tone of voice made it clear that Haruhi was ready to make that statement all too literal.

"It's just, well, um… Kacchan's been picking on me again, and I've been feeling a little down about that. That's all."

"Are you serious? Why didn't you say so before? If you just came to me from the start, I would have socked it to that jerk no problem!"

"That's kind of why I didn't do it."

"Well next time he does that, just come straight to me. Hell, come to me with any problem you have any time you have it, and I'll blow it into oblivion. That's just the kind of girl I am, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." Midoriya would feel bad about throwing Bakugou under the bus later. For now, he was too busy feeling bad about lying to such a strong person.

* * *

Training went about as well as it always did and took about as long as it always did, as well. At the end of the ten-kilometer run—broken up into small chunks so Midoriya wouldn't run the risk of death—Midoriya and Haruhi sat down for a snack break that was mostly used for her to keep talking about how they needed a martial arts teacher. She didn't dwell on it as much as she did other days though, most likely because their conversation on the train directed most of her attention towards her wanting to beat up Bakugou. Midoriya wasn't a fan of that, but he knew better than to comment on it.

The two didn't bring many snacks to eat, so they ended up finishing rather quickly. It was about time for lunch, so the plan was to go back to Haruhi's house so her father could make them something to eat.

That plan was interrupted by a kunai being thrown into a tree and missing Midoriya's head by only a few centimeters.

"What?" was all Midoriya managed to say as he jumped away from the tree.

"What the hell?! Are we being attacked by a ninja?! Show yourself!" Haruhi shouted, holding her Mirko water bottle like a dagger. Midoriya chose not to point out that a ninja wouldn't show themselves if they were trying to kill someone, but that wouldn't help them in any way, shape or form. Either way, there was no sign of anyone attacking them in the immediate area, so that had to mean the attacker was either hiding somewhere or had a Quirk that let them attack from a distance.

"Who cares?! W-We've gotta get out of here! If someone's trying to attack us, we need to get as far away from here as possible! No, wait, first, we need to alert the other people in the park! Ah, but what if that starts a panic and makes this person do something crazy?! If that happens, then—"

"Hey look, there's a note attached to the end of this thing." By the time Midoriya had turned around, Haruhi had already removed a paper scroll from the end of the kunai. "'Izuku Midoriya and Haruhi Suzumiya, I humbly request that you meet me at the most opposite end of the park from your location in ten minutes so that our destinies can become fully intertwined. Come alone if you know what's good for you. P.S. That last part isn't meant to be threatening, I just mean to make you think about what would be best for your own development. Seriously though, come alone.'"

"Oh my God."

"I know, right? It's a real-life letter of challenge! Someone's calling us out for all-out war!"

_How did you get that from all of that? And why do you sound happy about this?! _Midoriya thought.

"This is amazing! To think that someone would recognize our talents so early into our careers! Well, let's not keep them waiting."

"Suzumiya-san, we can't actually meet this guy! The only thing we should be doing is calling the police!"

"We can't do that! Even if the note didn't specifically say to come alone, we need to be there in ten minutes before they leave."

"I don't want to meet the person who almost put a sixth hole in my head!"

"Hey, if they actually wanted to do that, it would have happened." Haruhi pointing out that fact did nothing to make him feel better. "Besides, I don't think this person wants to hurt us."

"Could have fooled me."

"I'm serious, Midoriya. I can't explain it, but when I was reading that note, I got the feeling that whoever wrote it doesn't have any ill intentions for us. I know I sound weird, but that's just what was going through my head, and I'm sticking by it." Haruhi's words and face showcased no less conviction than they did on any other occasion. It was hard to not find the whole thing intoxicating.

"What if you're wrong, though?"

"Just like I said before, any time you have a problem, I'll blow it into oblivion!" The way Haruhi smiled almost made Midoriya believe that that wasn't hyperbole.

* * *

With only a few reservations unable to be cleared away, Midoriya and Haruhi made their way to the most opposite end of the park from them; neither one was completely sure about what that meant, so they just headed northeast of their location and hoped that it would all work out. Despite the park being as large as it was, despite the two of them just completing a heavy workout, they made it to the part of the fence surrounding the northeast end of the park in just a few minutes. Midoriya was happy to know that he was really getting something out of his training, but now was hardly the time to be elated about something like that.

"Okay. Only eight minutes have passed since you read the note. Where is this guy?" Midoriya asked.

"Don't worry, they'll be here. They're not the kind of person to make a big fuss about something and not commit to it," Haruhi said.

"You sure have a lot of opinions about someone you've never met."

"It's called optimism, Midoriya." He had his doubts about that.

"Yes, and I thank you ever so much for it!" shouted a feminine voice that belonged to neither one of them. That had to be the mysterious person who wanted to talk with them, yet she still wasn't making her presence known.

"Before we go any further, do you think I could get an apology for almost being debrained earlier?" Midoriya asked.

"Hey, if I actually wanted to do that, it would have happened," she said. The smug look on Haruhi's face was hardly justified.

"Anyway, stop hiding like a coward, already. You're the one who challenged us to a fight, so hurry up and let us give you one!" Haruhi said.

"A fight? Oh, _non, non, non_. There won't be any fisticuffs between us, little children. Not if I can help it, anyway."

"Why did you call us out then? Who are you, anyway?"

"Who am I? Who am _I_? I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the corset emphasizing the bosom of justice!" A puff of smoke appeared around the top of one of the trees. "I am The Kagemusha—whoa, whoa, whoa!" The mystery woman appeared in the middle of the puff of smoke, quickly lost her footing, and fell to the ground flat on her face.

"A-Are you all right?" Midoriya asked.

"Yeah. I just—ow. _Right _on my keys. But yeah, I'm The Kagemusha. Nice to meet you." The mystery woman—Kagemusha, as it were—got up off the ground, and Midoriya finally managed to get a good look at her. She was a tall woman who looked to be somewhere between her late twenties and early thirties with a head of curly brown hair adorned with a smiley face barrette and the kind of fur-lined helmet that Takeda Shingen would have worn. Her body had the sculptings of a supermodel—large breasts, thin waist, toned abs, healthy thighs, the works—and it was all wrapped up in a _sarashi_, leggings colored like the American flag, and a male cheerleading coat that hung off of her shoulders like a cape. There might have been more, but Midoriya couldn't work up the nerve to stare at her for more than a few seconds.

"Well aren't _we _shy?" Haruhi asked.

"S-So Kagemusha—"

"No, it's _The _Kagemusha."

"That's what I said. Kagemusha," Midoriya said.

"No, no, my name is _The _Kagemusha. It's like A Tribe Called Quest, you gotta say the whole thing."

"Can't we just call you 'Kagemusha' for short?" Kagemusha started pouting and stomping her feet like a child.

"No, you idiot! My name is _The _Kagemusha! _The_! Kage! Musha!"

"The Kagemusha." As soon as Haruhi said that, The Kagemusha calmed down and looked at Haruhi with innocent eyes. "If you're not here to fight us, what are you here to do? And how do you know us, anyway?"

"Allow me to explain, children. To start things off, I am one of the people in this world who has made the necessary effort to become a Hero."

"Y-You are?" Midoriya asked.

"It's understandable if you haven't heard of me. I tend to do things on the down low, so I'm not really in the spotlight all that much."

"Guess that explains why a Hero fanboy like Midoriya didn't recognize you at first glance," Haruhi said. That was a good excuse, if not a little convenient. Still, Midoriya quickly discovered that, much to his own surprise, he did feel some sort of familiarity with The Kagemusha. Perhaps he saw her on TV once or read a report about her while surfing the web at some point; he couldn't exactly remember. At the very least, her voice sounded oddly familiar.

"So there I was, doing my daily patrol around this neighborhood, when I come across two little kids—that would be you—doing way more exercise than you'd expect a little kid to do. Curious, I decided to watch you two go at it, and because of that, I learned that you were a couple of Quirkless kids trying to have a go at being Heroes! At first, I thought it was silly—"

_Of course, you did_, Midoriya thought.

"—but then I spent a few days watching you, and I couldn't help but be touched by how committed you two were to your goal! There was a sort of romantic aspect to it all that just left my heart aflutter!"

"Why, thank you. That's exactly what we were going for!" Haruhi said. Midoriya wondered where he was when Haruhi decided on that aspect of their training.

"However, after so many weeks of just watching you two go at it, I knew that I couldn't just limit myself to being an observer. No, I needed to get directly involved in your process, so!" The Kagemusha pointed up at the sky and posed dramatically. "I've taken it upon myself to become your martial arts teacher!"

"Wow, cool!"

"No, it isn't! We need to get something straight first!" Midoriya said.

"You're right. What do you plan on teaching us, The Kagemusha? If you only have a single art under your belt, then forget it!"

_That's not what I was talking about! _Midoriya thought.

"Please, as if I'd be boring enough to just be that one-note. No, I'm the kind of woman who'll throw caution to the wind and throw every crazy book at you until you're the best of the best of the best! I'm gonna teach you everything there is to know under the sun, starting with stuff like wrestling, aikido, and while I'm at it, maybe a little Bartitsu. All that and more will be available to you the second we start to work together!" Haruhi's eyes looked like there were literal stars in them. For his part, Midoriya couldn't believe that he was meeting someone who was actually in tune with Haruhi, especially with that someone being a full-grown adult.

"U-Um, Miss… _The _Kagemusha. Not that this isn't a tempting offer, but I don't think this is something we can agree to right off the bat."

"Oh, I get it. You doubt my skills and want to see just how tough I really am!"

"That's not—"

"Nice thinking, Midoriya! It's not enough to say that you're a polymath-esque martial artist; you have to actually prove it!" Haruhi said.

"That's not why I'm—"

"Then come at me! If either of you can land even a single hit on me, then I can't teach you anything and I'll make sure to leave you both alone," The Kagemusha said.

"This isn't why I—" Before Midoriya could finish, Haruhi had already charged at The Kagemusha, yelling at the top of her lungs like a Viking warrior diving into battle. She stabbed at The Kagemusha with her Mirko water bottle, but The Kagemusha bent her body at an impossible angle to dodge, twisted her legs around Haruhi, and threw her into Midoriya, making the two collapse onto the ground in a pile of bruises and lumps.

"Your turn, Izuku," The Kagemusha said.

"For obvious reasons, I elect to forfeit," Midoriya said.

"What the hell, Midoriya?! Avenge me!" Haruhi said as she pulled herself off of him.

"Avenge yourself."

"No!"

"Ha Ha Ha Ha! Now you're more than aware of my awesome might, right? Right?" The Kagemusha asked. "I'm sure you are, but as much as I'd like for you to commit to me, there's one other show of strength I wanna give you before you sign on the dotted lines. It can't be done here, though, so come with me, okay?"

"Okay!" At that point, Midoriya had decided to give up on protesting and allowed himself to fall into Haruhi and The Kagemusha's flow, wherever it was going to take him.

* * *

The Kagemusha directed Midoriya and Haruhi out of the park and back to Koyoen station, the three of them jumping on the first train to arrive. The entire walk to the station and the entire ride on the train, no one they walked by so much as batted an eye at The Kagemusha; the fact that a grown woman could walk around in such a provocative outfit and not draw attention to herself had to be proof that she really was a Hero.

The three of them were on the train for five stops. Midoriya didn't recognize the town they were in, but Haruhi said that she remembered reading that the town they were in was a rich neighborhood said to be under the protection of a branch of the Yamaguchi-gumi. Midoriya's heart could have done without that second bit of information.

The Kagemusha spent thirty minutes directing them out of the main part of the town and to the foot of a mountain. There was a wooden sign that bore the image of a crane fishing a dragon from the heavens; the mountain clearly belonged to someone, but in case it wasn't clear enough already, there was a message outright denoting it as private property. Naturally, Haruhi and The Kagemusha ignored that and stepped past it under the grounds that a family that couldn't be bothered to fence off their property probably didn't care that much about trespassers. Midoriya greatly wanted to point out everything wrong with that, but Haruhi had already grabbed him by the hand and made him an accomplice in her crime.

"Okay, this looks good," The Kagemusha said after they had spent twenty minutes walking up a seemingly random trail.

"Good for what? What are we doing here?" Midoriya asked.

"You two are doing nothing. I, on the other hand, am now going to show you the full heights of my power, power that, with any luck, you'll be able to obtain by the time you're ready for U.A." The Kagemusha surveyed the area for a bit before running over to a large boulder a few meters away. "Before anyone gets any ideas, I don't have a Quirk that boosts my strength in any way."

The Kagemusha got into a fighting stance that looked like a boxing stance, but she had one arm kept to her chest and the other stretched out in front of her. She took a quick breath and delivered a punch to the boulder that was too fast for Midoriya to completely keep track of. The end result—the boulder being shattered to pieces with a single blow—was perfectly visible, however.

In an instant, Midoriya found himself too in awe of The Kagemusha to be as suspicious as he should have been.

"That was incredible! Absolutely, positively incredible!" Haruhi said.

"I take it I pass the interview?"

"With flying colors, The Kagemusha!"

"A-Are you saying that we'll get to do _that _someday?" Midoriya asked.

"Definitely," The Kagemusha said. "Sir Roland of the _Matter of France _wielded the sword Durandal, which was an indestructible blade capable of destroying giant boulders with a single strike. When I'm done with you two, you'll be a pair of unbreakable Durandals. How does that sound? Good, right?" Haruhi was already nodding her head, and if Midoriya was being honest, he wanted to do that, too.

"Can I just know your name? Your _real _name? If we're going to be working together, I think we should at least know that much about you."

"I beg to differ, but you're the boss. I'd still like to be called The Kagemusha, but my real name is Yasumi Watahashi. If you ever decide to use it, please say it as if it's written in katakana."

"Gotcha!" Haruhi said. Midoriya was not at all surprised that Haruhi was the one to make sense of that, and he elected to not comment on it.

* * *

_If I'm perfectly honest, I never thought we'd actually find someone to teach us martial arts. With Haruhi's crazy standards, it should have been impossible for us to find someone remotely compatible with her. It's apparently impossible for me to be right about anything, though, because completely out of nowhere, Yasumi Watahashi—I mean Kagemusha—I mean _The _Kagemusha fell into our laps and checked off every box on Haruhi's crazy list. Sure, I got worn down to the point where I couldn't complain anymore, but it's still insane that something like that actually happened._

_It's moments like those that serve as good citation for the idea of the world revolving around Haruhi._


	5. Family Matters

_Never in my life did I think I would meet someone as eccentric as Haruhi, but then Yasumi Watahashi—sorry, Kagemusha—sorry again, _The _Kagemusha—came into my life. She thinks just like Haruhi, she laughs just like Haruhi, she's as opinionated as Haruhi. Seriously, some days I feel like I'm just training with her big sister._

_The results more than make up for it, though. The Kagemusha really knows her stuff. It's only been a month, but Haruhi and I have already started learning karate, wrestling, aikido, and Bartitsu. I still don't know why she's so insistent on that last one, but it's been fun learning all of that stuff, save for all the bruising, of course. Some of it's from training mishaps, but a lot of them are from The Kagemusha. Why is that, you ask?_

* * *

"Because this doesn't end until you two can take me down!" The Kagemusha said as she blocked simultaneous punches from Midoriya and Haruhi. Thanks to the height difference, the two of them had to jump off the ground to try and hit her, and she used that to throw them right back onto the ground. "You might think that I'm tough, but—"

"Fouette!" Haruhi cut her off with a poorly executed roundhouse kick that The Kagemusha jumped over, resulting in Midoriya being the only one to get hit.

"Did I deserve that?" Midoriya asked. Haruhi shrugged her shoulders.

"What I was _trying _to say was that you might think that I'm tough, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm a pretty weak Hero," The Kagemusha said. "There are probably at least a dozen Heroes who can beat me one-handed in this prefecture, alone. You two are trying to be Quirkless Heroes; you have to be tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties to make that happen! If you can't beat someone as weak as me, then you don't have a chance!" The Kagemusha picked the two of them up and slammed their bodies into one another before dropping them onto the ground.

"'Weak' feels rather subjective here," Midoriya said.

"Yeah, well I'm the one doing the subjecting, so deal with it!"

"I don't think you're using that word correctly, The Kagemusha."

"Deal with that, too!" Sometimes, there was just no talking to her. "Actually, deal with that some other time. It's about time for you two to get home."

"Is it that late, already?" Haruhi asked, having a noticeably easier time of standing up than Midoriya. "Man, time just flies right on by when we're doing this. That must mean it's really getting the job done!"

"That's the plan. See you two tomorrow!" The Kagemusha bowed her head and, just as she always did, ran down the mountain before Midoriya and Haruhi had a chance to get their stuff together, vanishing from their eyesight in a matter of seconds.

"Suzumiya-san, where do you think The Kagemusha goes when she's done with us?" Midoriya asked.

"Well, she's a Hero, so she probably just goes out to fight crime," Haruhi said. "Yeah, busting heads, putting out the flames of injustice, smiling at the cheering crowds, that'll be us in a few years, just you wait." With how confidently Haruhi talked about it, it was hard to see it as anything but fact. "Hey, you wanna have dinner at my place?"

"W-What?"

"I mean, you look pretty winded right now, so I doubt you're looking forward to the bus and the train back to your place. Plus your mom has that video date with your dad and your sister is playing with that Mimimaru girl, right?"

"'Miyokichi'."

"Hey, I'm trying to save you from a lonely evening with no one but yourself for company, so don't test me!"

"Sorry, sorry. Yes, I'd love to come over for dinner. Thank you ever so much for the generous and gracious offer."

"You're overdoing it a little, but you're welcome." Midoriya felt just exhausted enough to let that slide.

* * *

The sun had almost completely set by the time Midoriya and Haruhi arrived at the Suzumiya household. In a rare change of pace, Mai had managed to finish her daily shoots early and was there to greet them when they arrived. Since Sakuta was still preparing dinner, he and Mai suggested that the two of them help out, but Haruhi insisted that Midoriya do her share to pay her back for generously inviting him over. By the time the ridiculousness of it all could be fully processed, Haruhi had already gone upstairs to take a shower.

_Well, I don't mind helping out, so it's not _that _big a deal_, Midoriya thought. It also helped that he had picked up a thing or two about cooking from watching Bakugou play house with his sister.

"Izuku, you can keep in the stems if you want, but I feel the need to say that those will give us diarrhea," Sakuta said. Midoriya quickly threw out the offending stems and hoped that it was something they could just ignore.

"I guess Watahashi-san didn't feel that poison control was a skill worth learning for a Hero in training," Mai said.

"You can't punch someone in the face with knowledge, after all," Midoriya said.

"That woman's always been kind of a nut. I think. I feel like I know her, but it feels like that thing where you just trick yourself into thinking that you're familiar with someone or something," Sakuta said.

"I'm pretty sure I did a magazine shoot with her. Probably an old one, though; I doubt I'd still have a copy lying around," Mai said. "Anyway, things are going well with her?"

"T-They're going well, I think. Suzumiya-san and I have been learning a lot from Watahashi-san. A lot of it is just how to take a punch from an adult, but I want to believe that it'll add up to something in the end," Midoriya said.

"That's the dream, I guess," Sakuta said. "Haruhi, if you're out of the shower, come down and help!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Haruhi said from upstairs. Soon after, the sound of Haruhi's feet echoed through the house and they caught sight of her coming down the stairs. However, it quickly became apparent that she wasn't walking downstairs on her own two feet, but on her own two hands.

"Suzumiya-san, you're really doing it! I can't believe it!" Midoriya said.

"So this isn't surprising to you?" Mai asked.

"Not at all. Suzumiya-san's been trying to perfect that since we first started training with Watahashi-san."

"The Kagemusha and I both agree that a Hero needs to be more dexterous than the average person, and what shows off dexterity better than this?" Haruhi asked. At some point, she had stopped doing a normal handstand and started standing alternating between which single hand she would be standing on.

"I'm not sure what I expected you two to be learning, but I don't think I considered anything like this. What about you, dear?" Mai asked.

"Izuku, next Saturday, the Suzumiya clan and some of its associates are going on a day trip to the beach," Sakuta said. Midoriya wondered if he knew how much of a non-sequitur that was. "A few times a year, Mai-san gets to bring people to a private beach owned by her production company. We won't have the place all to ourselves, but it won't be nearly as crowded as a regular beach, so there's that. Want to tag along?"

"Um, yeah. Sure," Midoriya said.

"Wait, what?" Haruhi asked. Somehow, she ended up losing enough of her concentration to lose her balance and fall over.

"Feel free to invite your mother and sister, too." His little sister would cry and beg to come along the second he said anything, so asking felt like a formality.

"Hey, hold on a minute!" Haruhi said as she picked herself up off the floor. "Dad, are you really just—"

"Just what?" Midoriya asked. Haruhi looked at him for only a second before turning away and heading for the kitchen counter.

"Forget it. It's fine, I guess." Haruhi helped Mai prepare some chicken, and Midoriya went back to the vegetables with Sakuta. There was something on Haruhi's mind, but Midoriya didn't know how to broach the subject without making her mad.

The only thing he had to go on was how she kept glancing at her father.

* * *

Time passed as slowly and as quickly as it often did, and the day of the beach trip arrived. The other people who would be joining them were Haruhi's three aunts; two of them would meet them at the beach, and while they waited for the third one to arrive at the Suzumiya house, Inko had tea with Sakuta and Mai while Midoriya and Haruhi played with Midoriya's sister.

"Now I've got you! Super Mega Plus Ultra Hyper Plus Ultra Love Cannon of Love! Plus Ultra!" Midoriya's sister said, pointing a stick she found outside at Haruhi as she made what she thought were laser sounds from her mouth.

"Ha! Nice try, Hero, but I already cast an Anti-Love Cannon of Love Barrier around myself!" Haruhi said, laughing maniacally as she did.

"No fair! I didn't hear you say a spell!"

"That's because I'm powerful enough to use magic without the need for incantations!"

"No! How do I beat you, then?!"

"By matching her cheat for cheat," Midoriya said as he stood against a wall while reading a book on the history of the salmon ladder.

"I'm not cheating!"

"Every time my sister tries to do something, you say that you're doing something that completely blocks it. How is that _not _cheating?"

"It's not cheating when you have the power to have whatever power you want."

"You're the _last _person who should have that kind of power."

"And what's _that _supposed to mean?"

"Stabbing time!" Midoriya's little sister ran up to Haruhi and poked her in the back with her stick. "This is a super magic sword that stabs anything I want it to and can't be blocked or negated by anything! Times infinity! Plus two!"

"Hey, that's cheating!"

_Said the pot calling the kettle black_, Midoriya thought. At that moment, the doorbell rang, and since Haruhi was preoccupied with matching wits with a six-year-old, he took it upon himself to open the door.

"Hey, how's it—wait, who are you?" The one who asked the question was a young girl in a sleeveless top and blonde hair tied into a ponytail. Part of him was happy, part of him was still confused trying to figure out who she was supposed to be.

"That's my line, maybe?" Midoriya asked.

"How? How is it your line when this is my cousin's house?" the girl asked.

"Cousin? Do you mean Suzumiya-san? That's weird, she said that her aunt was the only one coming by today." The girl stomped past Midoriya and into the house with an expression on her face that made it look like she wanted to stab someone. Said someone appeared to be Haruhi.

"Haruhi, how many times do I have to tell you not to call me your aunt?!"

"Kind of in the middle of something, Nodoka," Haruhi said while trying and failing to pry the stick out of the hands of Midoriya's little sister.

"I don't know what this is, but my thing is more important!"

"Doubtful." Midoriya's little sister managed to free her stick from Haruhi's grasp and jumped up and down in celebration. "Okay, what do you want, exactly?"

"I _just _told you! If you're going to tell people about me, tell them I'm your cousin!"

"I'm not going to do that because lying is wrong."

"If not that, then tell them I'm your beloved big sister who you wish to shower with affection and constantly please."

"I'm not going to do that because it just says a _lot_." Nodoka pouted with a red-dyed face.

"So this girl is your aunt, then?" Midoriya asked.

"Yep. Nodoka Tadamichi."

"But she's so young. She looks like she's the same age as us."

"Oh, oh, Deku-kun, I've seen this before!" Midoriya's little sister said. "She looks like a kid, but she's actually just super short and flat-chested!"

"That is _not _what's going on here; I'm only in the seventh grade, and besides, I still beat Haruhi in both of those things!" Nodoka said. Haruhi wordlessly pulled out Nodoka's scrunchie and threw it across the hall. "What the hell?!"

"Don't act like you didn't deserve it, _Aunty_."

"Aunty, Aunty, Aunty!" Midoriya's little sister with a laugh.

_Oh, boy_, Midoriya thought.

"Knock it off!" Nodoka said.

"Sorry Nodoka-san, but that's not happening," Midoriya said. "Once my sister hears someone be addressed by a nickname, she keeps at it until she hears a new nickname. Long story short, I'd like it if at least my sister didn't call me 'Deku'."

"Hey, that's way better than this! God, why did Dad have to get another woman pregnant when he was in his fifties? Sis was already almost thirty, and when you're divorced and your first kid is that old, that's when you stop adding to the family registry."

"So are you saying you hate being called an aunt so much that you wish you were never born?"

"Shut up! What even are you, anyway?"

"Hey, don't call my partner a 'what'!" Haruhi said.

"Partner? Oh, you must Midoriya, then. You know, from the way Haruhi's talked about you, I thought you'd have a more impressive jawline. Still, I _guess _I get what she's talking about." Nodoka had a smirk on her face that Midoriya neither liked nor understood.

"Midoriya, ignore that. Ignore Aunty's stupid words."

"Hey!"

"Aunty! Aunty! Aunty!" Midoriya's little sister cheered _ad nauseum_.

"And that's enough out of you!" Nodoka stomped her foot against the floor, and as she did, a pink mist shot out of her body that flew over the head of Midoriya's little sister. After a few seconds, she stopped her chanting and simply fell onto her butt with an angelic, glazed look over her face.

* * *

_Nodoka Tadamichi! Quirk: Cooldown! Nodoka can emit a gaseous substance from her body that forces anyone who inhales it to be brought into a calm state of mind and lax state of being! Currently, Nodoka is only capable of using her Quirk on one person at a time, and the speed at which it takes effect—and eventually wears off—depends on the target's height, age, and weight! Also, please don't think too much about the ethical ramifications of her Quirk!_

* * *

"Wow, that's an amazing Quirk, Nodoka-san!" Midoriya said. "Being able to force someone into an idle state of mind and being has a lot of practical applications. If you're trying to rescue civilians from a dangerous situation, you could use it to calm them down so they don't struggle too much, and you could even use it to get Villains to surrender peacefully. Actually, Quirks often develop over time, so I wouldn't be surprised if you could eventually use it to manipulate the entire emotional spectrum. You could make Villains too happy to want to keep committing crimes, so sad that they feel remorse for what they're doing, apathetic enough towards what they're doing that they stop caring and just—"

"Okay, where's the off button on you?" Nodoka asked.

"Yeah, there's no real control over that. Also, that girl is like a righteous gemstone to me, so please don't make a habit of drugging her," Haruhi said. That ended up being enough to snap Midoriya out of his state of mind.

"Don't say it like that. Aspiring Heroes like me don't drug people, you know," Nodoka said while flipping her hair. "Besides, she's fine. You're fine, right, kid?"

"The ceiling is so pretty," Midoriya's little sister said, her eyes still a little glazed over.

"Yeah, she's fine." If Midoriya wasn't busy thinking about the various applications for Nodoka's Quirk, he might have paid that more mind.

* * *

Not long after Nodoka showed up, the adults joined up with the children and Nodoka stopped arguing with Haruhi to give Mai a hug, her haughty personality immediately being discarded in favor of the persona of a girl who earnestly loves her sister; what Midoriya wouldn't give for his own sister to show him that level of admiration.

Moving on from that, the families shuffled into their respective cars and drove off for the beach. Haruhi had somehow worked her way into the Midoriya family's car, but as a result of both that and Haruhi's general personality, the ride didn't seem to take that long for Midoriya, and soon enough, they had arrived at their destination. Even though it was rather hot, just like Sakuta said, there weren't a lot of people at the beach, so they more or less had it to themselves. While Izuku took in the sights, Haruhi pulled on his arm as she shouted, "Hey, great to see you guys!"

"There's our favorite Haru-chan!" Haruhi let go of Midoriya as she was swept up into a hug by two brown-haired women, one of them—the one who had just spoken—having panda paws in place of human hands, and the other one having skin that looked like it was covered in a lacquer finish.

"Okay, a little tight there, Haruhi," said the woman with the lacquer finish body. "Okay, guess Sakuta wasn't lying when he said that you've been working out."

"It could also be that you're just really weak, Tomoe," said Sakuta as the rest of the group made their way over to Midoriya and Haruhi's location.

"Oh, shut up." Tomoe's tone was curt, but she spoke to Sakuta with a smile, nonetheless.

"Big brother! Mai-san! Nodoka-chan! Fourth and fifth people I don't know!" The woman with panda paws for hands let go of Haruhi and hugged those five—Inko and Midoriya's little sister included—and lifted them a sizeable distance off the ground.

"Wait, why did she call Sakuta-san her brother, but Tomoe-san didn't?" Midoriya asked.

"Because my dad is Aunt Kaede's brother; he's not related to Aunt Tomoe," Haruhi said.

"But aren't both of them your aunts? How can that be the case if he's only related to one of them? Tomoe-san doesn't look like your mom, so—" As Midoriya tried to figure out how everyone was related to one another, he noticed the gold ring on Kaede's finger, then he quickly took notice of how it was a perfect match for the one on Tomoe's finger. "Oh. O-Oh. Oh!"

"Little slow to the draw, I see," Tomoe said as Midoriya went red in the face. "Tomoe Suzumiya. Professional chef and happily married to that little panda Kaede over there."

"I love you too, sweetie!" Kaede said while still hugging the rest of the group.

"I-I'm Idzuku Midoriya—I mean _Izuku _Midoriya! It's-It's nice to meet you both!" Midoriya said while bowing repeatedly.

"This isn't gonna be a problem, is it?"

"No no no no no no!" Midoriya said while rapidly waving his arms. "I-I don't have a problem with that kind of stuff! I've just never really had any interactions with gay people or anyone else on that kind of spectrum before, so I just got caught off guard, that's all! I-I really don't have a problem with that, I swear!"

"Wait, but how is this new territory when you're friends with Haru-chan?" Kaede asked as she finally ended her massive hug. With that, Midoriya felt like his heart was ready to leap out of his chest.

"Yeah, I like girls. What'd you think all that stuff with Mirko was about?" Haruhi asked. "I mean, I like guys too, but still, learn to pay attention to your surroundings."

"R-Right. Right."

"Someone certainly looks relieved to hear that Haruhi still likes boys," Nodoka whispered in his ear from out of nowhere.

Midoriya was regretting agreeing to Sakuta's proposal.

"Okay, the kid's not homophobic. What a surprise. Let's move past this and hit the beach already," Sakuta said.

""Yay!"" Kaede shouted in tandem with Midoriya's little sister. Midoriya, of course, was more than happy to let the topic veer away from him.

* * *

"Listen Midoriya, just because we're at the beach doesn't mean we can completely slack off on our training. The second a Hero starts to slack off, their bodies turn to mush and all of their hard work becomes meaningless. We're with our families and the beach doesn't give as good an environment as what we're used to, so we'll have to make some adjustments, but don't expect to get through today without breaking a sweat!"

Midoriya had his eyes locked on Haruhi and took in every word she said with laser focus, far more than usual. Maybe it was because he was still trying to make up for the slight faux pas from before, or maybe it was because he was trying to figure out how he should react to the orange two-piece she was wearing. Whatever it was, his attention was solely on her—though if he had to choose, he'd want the former to be in play.

"That's a pretty bold suit you've got there," Nodoka said while wearing a frilly black and white swimsuit that exposed roughly the same amount of skin. Midoriya hoped she heard her hypocrisy. "What happened to that one-piece you'd always wear?"

"I don't know _what _you're talking about. This kind of outfit has been circulating through my wardrobe for years; at this point, it's like an old friend to me—"

"Haruhi, there's a piece of paper on your butt!" Before anyone could say anything, Midoriya's little sister ripped a price tag off of Haruhi's swimsuit and held it up for everyone to see.

"Wait, is this what you bought at that store in the mall yesterday? Why'd you buy a new swimsuit all of a sudden, and why did you yell at me when I tried to ask you what you bought?" Midoriya asked. Haruhi ripped the tag out of his little sister's hands and ripped it up into tiny pieces.

"None of your business, now stop being stupid, stupid!" Haruhi said.

_Can't argue with that logic, I suppose_, Midoriya thought.

"Don't worry Izuku, you're probably too young to worry about that kind of stuff, anyway," Inko said as she approached the children from behind.

_I'll take your word on that._

"Hey, you're looking pretty good, Mrs. Midoriya. Have you been working out?" Haruhi asked.

"Oh no, I just haven't felt like eating as big portions as I used to, lately. Thank you for noticing, though," Inko said with a blush. Midoriya didn't think about until right then, but his mother had been eating less, lately. His sister was happy to have more food to eat at dinner and didn't think about it further than that, but he did have to wonder what brought about her change in diet.

"Sorry we kept you waiting!" Midoriya turned his head and saw the adults of the Suzumiya family making their way to the group. Just as Midoriya had predicted, the already beautiful Mai, Kaede, and Tomoe had their respective beauties further emphasized by the multicolored swimsuits they wore that highlighted how truly adult they all were; it was the cherry on top of the ice cream, for lack of a better comparison. He knew that staring at any of them for too long would give Haruhi just cause to chew him out—picking Mai would probably get him killed on the spot—but that surprisingly ended up not being a problem.

The reason being that the vast majority of his attention was directed at the three-lined scar adorning Sakuta's chest. It was an old-looking scar that ran diagonally across most of his chest, fashioned in a manner that looked like it was made by a large animal. He had never seen anything like it, and as such, he didn't know how to properly react to it.

"You're curious, aren't you?" Sakuta asked.

"N-No! I mean, maybe a little," Midoriya said with a hint of hesitation.

"I bet you're just dying to know right now." Midoriya nodded his head with a hint of hesitation. "Well, I can't tell you. Mai-san's cup size is knowledge that only she and I are privy to."

"What?"

"However, since you're embracing your blossoming youth, I will say that it's bigger than you might think, even if it already looks sizeable to the naked eye." Without a hint of hesitation, Mai stomped on Sakuta's foot. "You're usually better at making it hurt."

"I'm holding back for the kids," Mai said.

"What do you say we ditch them and go all out?"

"Don't worry; I'm gonna make sure we have plenty of time for all that and more."

"You two are gross. Stop being gross," Tomoe said.

"Seriously, Sakuta; that's my sister, for Pete's sake!" Nodoka said.

"Hey, she's just as bad as me," Sakuta said.

"Maybe not _as _bad, but still plenty bad, I'd say," Mai said.

"Tomo-chan, should I be bad, too?" Kaede asked. Tomoe's face went as red as it could with her complexion. Midoriya was regretting agreeing to Sakuta's proposal even more so.

"Okay, that's enough of this. Come on, let's go do something," Haruhi said, pulling Midoriya by the arm as the adults continued on in that manner. "You're so lucky your dad's always out of the country. You never have to come home to anyone engaging in that kind of illness."

"What illness?" Midoriya asked, finally not feeling too embarrassed to talk.

"Love, obviously. The emotion people call 'love' is nothing but a carnal desire leftover from our ape ancestors. It achieves nothing in the grand scheme of things, yet it's not something that we can ever fully suppress. The least a person can do is limit it to dating and the occasional intercourse, but my parents and aunts are just always going at it, like they don't even get how stupid they're being. It's just disgusting, you know?"

"I-Is it?" Midoriya looked back at the adults. He saw Sakuta and Mai trading barbs with smiles on their faces; he saw Kaede clinging to Tomoe's arm while Tomoe tried to contain herself. He then turned away from them and looked at Haruhi for a second before immediately redirecting his eyes towards the sand beneath his feet. "I-I don't know if I'd go that far if I'm being honest. I don't think I know that much about love, but I don't think it'd be all that bad with the right person?" Once again, Midoriya did what he could to not look at Haruhi.

"Typical answer from a typical person. That's fine, I guess. I've only ever met one person who understood what I was talking about, and as much as I like you, you and she are in completely different leagues."

"Well, _that _makes me feel better."

"Good to hear," Haruhi said with a smile.

Midoriya had fewer regrets about accepting Sakuta's proposal.

* * *

Just as Midoriya had feared, Haruhi kept to her word about making them keep training while at the beach. Haruhi made the two of them, among other things, do push-ups on the shoreline while waves crashed into them, hold their breath underwater for as long as possible, and have people bury them under incredible amounts of sand so they could forcibly break out of it. It was certainly draining, but it wasn't as tiring as the usual routine, especially since Haruhi did make time for fun stuff like building sandcastles with Midoriya's little sister, eating hot dogs, and looking for sea creatures on the ocean floor—that one wasn't as fun, and they only found sea cucumbers that ended up being thrown at Nodoka. A mixed bag of amusement and annoyance; it was exactly what Midoriya expected to get out of a beach trip with Haruhi.

As the afternoon carried on, Sakuta called the kids over from their own fun and convinced them to take part in some beach volleyball. Inko said that she didn't have any confidence in her athleticism so she decided to be the referee, thus allowing the teams of kids and adults to work out evenly.

"Let's go!" Kaede said. She tossed the ball into the air for the first serve, and it flew over to the other side of the court like a rocket. Midoriya immediately started thinking about the possibility of Kaede's Quirk actually giving her the proportional strength of a panda, and as he got caught up in that, he didn't do anything when Haruhi told him to go for the ball.

"I got it, I got it!" cried his little sister. However, it turned out that her interpretation of "getting it" involved her just standing still while the ball hit her in the face. "Yay!"

"Midoriya, get your sister's masochism under control!" Nodoka said.

"Don't use words like that when she's in earshot," Midoriya said.

"Both of you keep your eyes on the ball!" Haruhi shouted. Without realizing it, Kaede had produced another power serve, though Midoriya regained focus just in time to set up a successful receive.

"Nice receive!" Haruhi said in broken English. She hit the ball over the net as soon as it was in reach, but Sakuta was quick to send it right back at them. Nodoka took the receive, and the airborne ball was intercepted by Haruhi who passed it towards Midoriya. Midoriya jumped up to hit the ball and score his team a point. As he did, Mai, Kaede, and Tomoe all jumped up to block the attack.

_T-T-Too many beach balls! _Midoriya made the mistake of giving the three of them a cursory glance and was too distracted to give the ball a good hit, resulting in it bouncing harmlessly off of their hands and onto the sand. Midoriya fell with far less grace.

"Oh my God," Nodoka said with a hand against her face. Before Midoriya could get up, Haruhi ran over and started kicking him in his back.

"Get your head in the game already, Midoriya! I'm doing you a favor by not killing you for what you obviously need to die for, so you can at least not look like an idiot out there!" Haruhi said, each breath punctuated by a kick to the spine.

"How's it feel to get crushed by your old man? I bet it must sting like crazy," Sakuta said.

"You plan on actually _trying _to win today?" Tomoe asked.

"What are you doing? That's my daughter you're talking to." Tomoe glaring at Sakuta caught Midoriya's eye as he pulled himself out of the sand.

"Here it comes!" Kaede said as she launched another serve, that time directing it right at Midoriya's little sister. That time, the ball hit her head at an angle that sent it high into the air. The women on the adult's team looked ready to block, but Midoriya couldn't afford to get distracted again, so he put all of his strength into his legs and jumped as high and as fast as he could to intercept the ball seconds before the women could establish their defense. He hit the ball as hard as he could, and in the end, it sailed over their heads and hit the ground with what Midoriya interpreted as a triumphant thud.

"Yeah! That's more like it!" The second Midoriya hit the ground, Haruhi ran over and high fived him with a smile on her face. To his surprise, however, she was the only one smiling while everyone else just looked confused to various degrees.

"I-Izuku? C-Could you always do that?" Inko asked.

"Um, probably not?" Midoriya asked.

"What, do you think you guys are on Karasuno, or something?" Sakuta asked.

"You're only saying that because you're upset he got one over on us," Mai said.

"You tell 'em, sis!" Nodoka said. "But seriously though, what the hell was that?"

"The first step on the long road of us taking over the spotlight, that's what the hell that was!" Haruhi said. She picked up the ball, ran to the back of the court, and spiked the ball with enough strength and precision to immediately score them a point. "Yeah! Now we got this!"

The kids' team ended up losing by ten points.

* * *

Eventually, the day turned to night and the group moved to end the day by sitting around a bonfire. Everyone was going on about the day they just went through in a naturalistic recap save for Nodoka who, at some point, had fallen asleep against Mai's shoulder. Midoriya felt embarrassed whenever someone brought up the volleyball match, but he managed to power through it. The day ended up being a good day, and he couldn't remember why he felt any sort of apprehension earlier.

"Okay, so who here wants to know about my scar?" Sakuta's question made Midoriya remember the source of those feelings.

"W-Well, maybe. It seemed like it'd be awkward to ask you directly though, Sakuta-san," Inko said.

"W-What my mom said," Midoriya said.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I was going for," Sakuta said. "I would have just gone right into it, but it's—well, it's not really a super heavy topic at this point, but it still could have made things weird, so I just ignored the elephant in the room by turning things towards something with more universal appeal."

"Mai-san's body? Yeah, I think I get that," Kaede said. With a pout on her face, Tomoe grabbed onto one of Kaede's arms.

"Sakuta, I think you should get started before this loses what little endearment it has," Mai said.

"Right, right," Sakuta said. "This scar on my chest? Well, I guess you could say that this is one of the marks of a Hero." Midoriya, not understanding the statement, looked over at Haruhi for guidance, but she was just looking at her father with a face full of anxiety. Midoriya was left to puzzle through it on his own, and because of that, he came to a conclusion that left him feeling plenty stupid.

"O-Oh my God! You're you! I-I knew I recognized you from somewhere, and that's because you're you! The Youthful Hero, Buta Yarou!"

"Ever young and always adolescent, the Buta Yarou is here to save the day!" Kaede said while posing like she was a Super Sentai. "That was my brother's catchphrase back in the day."

"It should really stay in the past," Haruhi said.

"Hey, that kind of stuff was cool back in the day, and your old man was as cool as they come," Sakuta said.

"Can't be that cool if Midoriya didn't recognize you."

"That's only because he retired before I was born, but I still know a lot about him!" Midoriya said. "I mean, he had over one hundred crimes solved in his first year of duty, and he managed to go solo just at age twenty; that's the youngest anyone's ever done it, even younger than All Might! Oh, oh! Remember the time you single-handedly fought off the Curious Rejection Community just long enough for the police to arrive and provide backup?!"

"I was there for it, so yeah," Sakuta said.

"It was amazing! A lot of them managed to get away, but you still managed to put a lot of the high ranking members behind bars! Then there was the time you—wait, we're getting off track. We were talking about your scar, and—wait, Sakuta-san, is that why you retired? I know where you got that from, and it shouldn't have been life-threatening, right?"

"Let's start with a little backstory. It was a few years into Mai-san and mine's marriage, and for the first time, we were seriously considering starting a family." Midoriya caught sight of Haruhi kicking around some sand. "Both of us were doing work that kept us out of the house for most of the day, and we knew that that wouldn't be good for a kid, so one of us needed to stop working to take care of things during the day. The problem was that I was getting high up in the rankings at the time, Mai-san's acting was taking off, and neither of us could make a good enough case for why the other person should be the one who'd get to keep working. We were at a deadlock, but then the universe," Sakuta pointed a thumb at his scar, "took the decision out of our hands."

"That fight from twelve years ago with the Peerless Thief, Oji Harima."

"That's right. The bastard got me good with some crazy moves I'd never seen before and sent me straight to the hospital, with this scar being the only souvenir. As you said, the injury was never life-threatening, but for the first time in my life, I started to realize how dangerous being a Hero could be. A lot of people see it as just something you do to have a good time, but if you make one wrong move, you end up dead as a doornail."

"This is going exactly where I know it's going, isn't it?" Haruhi asked.

"Admittedly, your father and I didn't put a lot of stock in what you and Izuku were doing, but then we saw the way you were just casually walking around on your hands—plus there was that stuff at the volleyball match—and it became clear that you were both putting too much into this for us to just play it cool," Mai said.

"So that's why you wanted me to be here? So you could tell us that story and see how we'd react?" Midoriya asked. "I guess this makes sense. Suzumiya-san and I are serious about this, but that doesn't change the fact that we can get hurt if we go forward with this. I mean, Sakuta-san, you have a Quirk and you still got hurt pretty bad, but a Quirkless person would probably walk out of that same situation with far worse injuries, if they could even walk out at all."

"Deku-kun, don't say that!" his little sister said. "It doesn't matter that you're Quirkless! You and Haruhi just need to be the best Heroes around to make up for it, and there's no way that you can't do that!"

"Thanks, but—"

"Listen to your sister, Izuku," Inko said. "I spent too many years not supporting your dream, but now that I'm making up for it, I want to make it clear that you can't hesitate just because of a bunch of what-ifs. This is what you want to do, so you need to give it your all."

"That's nice to hear, but—"

"But nothing!" Haruhi said, stomping on the beach so loud that she woke up Nodoka. "Mom, Dad, Midoriya and I aren't going to fall for your scare tactics! You think we don't know that being a Hero is dangerous? Of course, we do; we're not idiots, you know! We know the risks, but we're still going to do it! The two of us are going to be at the top of the world, no matter the cost! All the world's a stage, and we're gonna be right at the center! This is what we want to do, and no matter what, we're going to do it! If you got a problem with that, take it up with someone who cares!"

Near the end of her speech, Haruhi put a hand on her hip and pointed up at the starry sky. With the bonfire burning brightly in front of her, it made her form look like it possessed a degree of radiance. The moment was tarnished when Mai walked over to Haruhi and rubbed her head with her ears, but the point still stood.

"Izuku, your thoughts?" Tomoe asked as Haruhi batted away her mother's ears.

"Um, well, basically everything they just said, which I was going to say if I wasn't always interrupted. Maybe not as forcefully as Suzumiya-san, but still pretty much everything I wanted to say," Midoriya said.

"In that case, today was a rousing success," Sakuta said. "I had a feeling you'd say something like, but my conscience needed me to actually hear it. Something a Hero needs just as much as power is resolve, and I'd say you two have plenty of that to spare. So long as you keep to that state of mind, you won't hear any complaints from us."

"We better not," Haruhi said, still trying to bat away her mother's ears. Midoriya knew that Haruhi wouldn't like him laughing at that, but he couldn't help it. The day had gone too well for him to do anything else.

Of course, the laughter quickly came to an end when he looked out on the water and saw something strange: a teenage girl in a school uniform with eyes as black as the massive amount of hair on her head. Despite it being so dark out, Midoriya was able to perfectly make her out. Somehow, she was standing atop the surface of the water like a ninja or a biblical figure, and if Midoriya was looking at her right, she was staring right at him.

Midoriya blinked, and right before he went to alert Haruhi, the girl was gone without a trace. Midoriya didn't think she was some sort of hallucination, but he still elected to not say anything about it.

There was no reason to ruin a good day with something he didn't even understand.

* * *

_When I first met Sakuta-san and Tadamichi-san, I thought that they were just normal adults with a bit of a perverted side to them, but they've actually had to deal with some pretty heavy stuff. I guess you never really know a person until someone makes the effort. Either way, I'm glad they told me about that part of their lives. Not just because it's cool to know that Sakuta-san used to be a Hero—though that is really awesome—but because it's helping build on the idea that Haruhi and I aren't doing this alone, that the two of us have people backing us up in our corner. We're gonna need all the help we can get, and it's good that our parents are part of that._

_I still want to know who that girl was supposed to be, though._

* * *

**So two things happened in the time it took me to write this chapter. One, I had art commissioned for me by 8bitribbit on Tumblr, and two, the guidebook revealed that Sir Nighteye's real name is Mirai Sasaki. **_**Sasaki**_**. Interesting. Very interesting.**

**Anyway, until next time.**


	6. The Decision of Izuku Midoriya

_So for a few months, things were actually going really well. Getting Haruhi's parents fully in our corner was good from an emotional standpoint, and our training with The Kagemusha had been going great, too; I'm getting the hang of capoeira, and I'm going home with far fewer bruises than usual. A lot of the time, I feel like we're not making any real progress, what with how the two of us still can't touch her and everything, but then Haruhi goes on about how much stronger we're getting, so maybe we're doing something right? I don't know. The point is that everything was going really well, and I wouldn't have complained if they just stayed that way forever._

_So it figures that Haruhi would be the one to force things to change._

* * *

It was the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday, yet oddly enough, Midoriya and Haruhi weren't spending it on one of their training regiments. The reason for that was a simple one: now that it was November, their parents said that they needed to cut down on their training for a little while and study for entrance exams. Naturally, Haruhi threw a fit at the order, saying that getting into a bad junior high didn't matter if U.A. didn't care about things like that, but when The Kagemusha of all people told her to study, she finally begrudgingly accepted it. Midoriya thought that was a little weird, what with how similar to each other the two tended to be, but at the very least, the problem was solved.

At least it would have been if Haruhi would actually do any work. The two of them were supposed to be studying and doing homework at Midoriya's apartment, but he was the only one doing anything productive while Haruhi just sat around playing with his little sister. Granted, that was usually what she did when she came over, but it was more annoying than usual since they were supposed to be doing something important.

"Okay, and now I just need to roll a seventeen or higher," Haruhi said before releasing five different dice from her hands. "Yes! Now I can roll six dice, and if I get a high enough roll, I can get all of the cones!"

"Action card! No cones, Haruhi, no cones!" said Midoriya's little sister.

"Fine, but just try and use your shaman for anything. I _dare _you."

"I dare you to actually do some work," Midoriya said. Haruhi took off her Ledgerman hat and turned her attention to the desk Midoriya was sitting at.

"Excuse me, but I think that playing board games that require high-level thinking like this is more than useful, so there," Haruhi said.

"So there!" Midoriya's little sister parroted.

"That's not what we're supposed to be doing, Suzumiya-san, and you know it," Midoriya said. "If you don't actually do some work, you're going to fail, and our parents will get mad at both of us, so please just—"

"Oh my God, I already did everything before I came here!" Haruhi cut in. Before Midoriya even had a chance to cast doubt on that, Haruhi pulled a loose stack of papers out from her backpack and shoved them into his face. They were all the same homework sheets and practice tests Midoriya was in the middle of working through, and if he wasn't mistaken, a good majority of the answers on all of them were correct.

"You really did do this all on your own time," Midoriya said.

"Of course I did. I only come to your place to have fun, so I can't waste my time here on boring stuff like school."

"Where does that leave me, though?" Haruhi just shrugged her shoulders, because of course she did. "Still, you should at least do a little studying, right? Homework is one thing, but tests—"

"Aren't a big deal, either. When it comes to tests, you don't need to memorize the answers, you need to memorize how the teacher constructs the test. If you pay enough attention to your teachers, you'll find that they all have patterns for which kinds of questions they pull from the textbooks, so if you've got that down, then you just need to memorize those specific questions and you're golden. Obviously, this ends up backfiring on you if you don't understand the material, but I do, so there." The smirk on Haruhi's face was as smug as he expected it to be, and the worst part about it was that he had no argument against it.

"Can you help me out, then?"

"I'll see what I can do." Haruhi stepped over to Midoriya's desk while his little sister pulled out her phone and started watching videos of things being crushed under hydraulic presses. Most of Midoriya's answers were already correct, but there were just enough wrong ones to make Haruhi berate him for his apparent lack of intelligence as she pointed him in the right direction.

"You know, being book-smart might not be that important, but at least you being it makes this go a lot faster."

"You're pretty smart too, you know." Haruhi nodded her head with a smile. "If we just keep going like this, we're going to have no problem getting into Aldera."

"Are you serious?"

"Definitely! I know it's not the best school around, but I hear that's it's still kind of tough to get into, so—"

"No, I mean why would I ever want to go there?" The second question made Midoriya turn his head to properly face Haruhi, and the expression she wore was one of complete and utter disgust. He couldn't begin to understand the logic behind it.

"Wh-Why don't you want to go to Aldera?"

"Because I don't want to spend three more years stuck with Bakugou, duh!" Now he saw the logic behind it.

"Why don't you want to go to school with Kacchan? Kacchan's great!" Midoriya's little sister said.

"No, no he isn't. He sucks." Midoriya's little sister just pouted and went back to her videos.

"He's not that bad. You just need to, you know, give him a chance," Midoriya said.

"What, like how he gave me a chance to be known as something other than the Quirkless girl who needs to be laughed at?"

"H-He's still not the worst person in the world." It was a lousy defense, but it was the only one he had.

"So that's supposed to mean something? 'Mr. Bakugou, congratulations on not being the _absolute _worst person in the world! Take your silver medal, and please, for all of us, have a splendid time making other people's lives a living hell.'" Midoriya didn't know who she was supposed to be impersonating, but he hated how well it worked. "I hate that guy just from dealing with his crap for a few months, so why do you keep bending over backwards to defend him, despite spending years dealing with all of it?"

"That's not—"

"And you want to go to the same school as not just him, but all the people who went along with his bullying and will just spend the next three years roping all the new people you meet along for the ride? You really are some kind of masochist, aren't you?"

"No, I just—" Midoriya was sure he had something to say, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember what it was.

"Look Midoriya, I'm not going to Aldera, not even as a backup choice. I'm going to East Junior High; it's the same school Nodoka goes to, and more importantly, it's not the one Bakugou wants to go to. If that's not something you can do, then fine. We'll work out the finer details of our partnership later." Haruhi stepped away from Midoriya's desk and resumed the game she was playing his little sister. She was still basically right next to him, but it suddenly felt like he was all alone in the world.

At least that could be used as an argument against the idea of him being a masochist.

* * *

Several days had passed since Midoriya and Haruhi's fight, but things had mostly worked themselves out since then. Haruhi always sounded like she was upset about something when they had lunch or trained with The Kagemusha, but she still felt like talking to him, so at the very least, he could be thankful for that. Midoriya desperately wanted to fix things between them, but if, days later, he still couldn't come up with a proper rebuttal to her argument, then he knew he wasn't ready to mend any bridges.

At some point, he needed to figure out what to do, but at the moment, there was something else occupying his time: his very last sports festival as an elementary school student. He wasn't usually excited about it, mostly because he always did terribly, but with all of the strength training he had gone through in the past few months, he wanted to believe that he had gotten good enough to at least not make a fool of himself. Simply not looking like an idiot was all he was hoping for.

"We're gonna go out there and crush them to smithereens! That's the way white team rolls!" Naturally, Haruhi had other ideas. Also naturally, she thought that just wearing the normal gym uniform was too boring, so she made the two of them dress up in red _haoris _and yellow headbands, Midoriya's reading "Nick of Time" and Haruhi's "Indian Summer"; the only victory he had obtained that day was successfully explaining to Haruhi why her idea of banners that said "White Power" in English was a terrible one.

"Didn't you all hear me? I said that we're gonna win!" Haruhi said. For the second time in a row, her declaration was met with silence. She didn't seem to grasp that this wasn't something that required a leader, and even if it was, she was the last person their team would want to put in charge.

_Besides, there's only one reason she even cares about something like this_, Midoriya thought. His gaze drifted towards the opposing red team, where Bakugou was making his presence known with enthusiasm rivaling Haruhi's. A single look at him made Midoriya remember the fight he had with Haruhi the other day, and with that, a lot of his enthusiasm was drained away.

Soon enough, the principal called for the start of the games, and the teams all lined up to shake each other's hands to start things off with a show of good sportsmanship. Against all odds, Midoriya ended up standing in front of Bakugou.

"G-Good luck, Kacchan," Midoriya said, extending a hand that Bakugou quickly slapped out of the way.

"Like I need any of that shit from you. Now go on and be a good little benchwarmer, Deku," Bakugou said. The teams dispersed from one another, Bakugou laughing all the while.

"You could have just left it at the slap," Midoriya said under his breath. Haruhi, who had been standing next to him, just flashed an exasperated look as the white team fell back to their area. He knew she was thinking that she was still right, that Bakugou truly wasn't a good person for him to be around.

He wanted her to be wrong about that, but it simply became harder and harder with every interaction.

* * *

"Don't screw up, Deku!" was what a large number of Midoriya's teammates yelled out as he got ready for his first event of the day: the bread eating contest. If the words weren't enough of an indicator, their tone made it clear that they weren't happy that the kid who always came in dead last was the one chosen to compete. He couldn't exactly blame them, but he still wanted to put up a good fight, and with any luck, his nerves would last long enough to make that happen.

"Red team ready?" a teacher asked. A burly boy called out a confident confirmation. "White team ready?" Midoriya let out a meek yelp that barely qualified as a "yes". "Go!"

With that, the bread eating contest had officially begun. Two pieces of bread were tied to a clothesline and suspended in midair, and the kids, with their hands tied behind their backs, had to keep jumping up and down until they could sink their teeth into it and pull it down. For most people, it took a few good jumps to get into the rhythm, and a few more to actually grab it.

Midoriya got it done in one jump.

"White team is the winner!"

_I did it! _Midoriya thought as he landed on the ground and finished eating the bread.

"Good going, Izuku!"

"Go Deku-kun, go!" Midoriya smiled as he heard his mother and his little sister cheer him on; he jumped back a bit when he heard Bakugou curse out in disbelief of the results, then he got a little confused when he heard Bakugou's mother laugh at that.

"Did-Did you actually _win _something?" asked a member of the white team.

"I-I guess so," Midoriya said.

"Awesome! Guess you're not complete dead weight, after all!" The words might have been off, but his heart was in the right place. It felt nice, either way.

As the kid walked away, Midoriya started to wonder how Haruhi was doing at the jump rope contest. Just as he started to think about it, he heard another teacher announce the end of the jump rope contest and the winner of said contest being the white team, i.e. Haruhi.

"You're doing great, sweetie!"

"I'm gonna give you a big kiss for every event you win, and a big kiss for every event you lose." Haruhi's parents were shouting words of encouragement from the sidelines, but she only responded with annoyed yells; Midoriya guessed that it was part the embarrassing nature of their words, part her not liking the sight of so many people fawning over her mom's beauty, but he'd never put himself at risk by asking about it.

When Haruhi stopped yelling at them, her eyes met with Midoriya's. Neither of them said a word, but Haruhi flashed a toothy grin and gave him a peace sign.

Now he knew that today was going to be a good day.

* * *

Katsuki Bakugou had been abruptly tossed into some sort of backwards reality parallel to his own. That was the only way of explaining what was the most insane day of his life.

Even if it was nothing compared to what U.A. did, the sports festival at his school was supposed to be Bakugou's greatest time to shine, the day where he did the best at showing everyone why he deserved their admiration and respect. He had succeeded in doing that every year since kindergarten, yet somehow, in his very last sports festival as an elementary school student, it was all falling apart. It was all falling apart, and it was all because of, of all people, Midoriya and Suzumiya.

He should have been more worried when Midoriya jumped into the air like a frog to grab that piece of bread in one go. He only reacted to that with confusion and frustration, but he wanted to think it was just a fluke thing. Then Suzumiya won the jump rope contest without even breaking a sweat. Still crazy, still abnormal, but he still tricked himself into thinking that it wasn't anything to be worried about.

Then came the ball toss. The second the whistle was blown, everyone went wild trying to toss balls into the basket, but somehow Midoriya and Suzumiya were the best at it. Every shot they took flew like a speeding bullet and went in without a hitch, and it took no time at all for them to pick up more and repeat the process all over again. By the time the contest was over, the white team had won by an incredible margin, and over half of their total score was gained by Midoriya and Suzumiya, alone.

"Man, you guys were on fire out there!" one kid from the white team said.

"Seriously! You two sure you're Quirkless?" another kid from the white team asked.

"Pretty sure that hasn't changed," Midoriya said.

"Instead of praising us, you should be feeling ashamed of yourselves for doing such a bad job," Suzumiya said. "Then again, I guess I can't blame you for that when the gaps in our experiences are so large. After all, hitting something motionless like this is child's play compared to trying to throw something at a beast in human skin moving at Mach speed."

"Mach speed's kind of an exaggeration, isn't it?" People on the white team started laughing at that, but Bakugou, bearing witness to all of it, just felt like punching something.

_What the hell even is this? _Bakugou thought. _Deku and Ribbons, they're actually able to do shit? Since when are they good for anything besides being a pain in the ass?! Have they been getting training from this "beast" thing? Who the hell would even waste their time on a couple of Quirkless nobodies like them?! Especially if one of them's Deku?! _It was that line of thought that gave credence to the backwards reality theory. Even if it was wrong, he still couldn't let this stand; he needed to do everything in his power to make everyone remember how things worked around here.

Then came the tug of war. Bakugou, Midoriya, and Suzumiya were the anchors of their respective teams, so he finally had a chance to personally beat those two down and remind them of where they stood. He pulled on the end of his rope with every muscle fiber of his being, knowing that it would be more than enough to take the two of them down. That's how it was supposed to go, but against all odds, the white team was in the lead. Having a couple of Quirkless kids was supposed to bring them down, yet for some reason, those two were contributing the most to their team, and they did so in a way that surpassed Bakugou's own efforts.

It was all a storm of illogic, and in the midst of it all, the red team fell down in the wake of the white team's victory.

"So this is pretty crazy, right?" one of the kids on the red team asked. "They've got the two Quirkless kids on their team, but they keep on winning!"

"I think I heard Suzumiya say something about her and Deku doing some kind of training? Maybe that's it," another kid on the red team said.

"Whatever it is, they're actually pretty tough. Didn't see that coming," a third kid on the red team said.

All of it was like nails on a chalkboard to Bakugou's ears. For his own teammates to be singing praises of people like Midoriya and Suzumiya was ridiculous. They were Quirkless, they were useless in the grand scheme of things, so why were they being put up on a pedestal while he wasn't even an afterthought? None of it made sense. He needed to fix things, he needed a chance to put everything back to how it was supposed to be.

As the day went on and wins and losses stacked up on both sides, he finally got that chance at the boys relay. By an excellent stroke of fate, he and Midoriya were chosen as the final runners for their respective teams; even better, the red team had a large lead over the white team, meaning Midoriya would have no chance of catching up to him once he finally got his baton; even better still, one glare from Bakugou was able to reduce Midoriya to a twitching mess, proving that he was still the same wimp as always.

_You're going down, Deku_, Bakugou thought. _I'm gonna bury you in a shallow grave and force-feed you a reminder of what happens when you try and mess with me! _The runner for the red team met up with Bakugou, and the second he grabbed the baton, he was off. The white team's runner was still far behind, and by the time he finally got to Midoriya, he was nearly a quarter of the way done. Victory was so close, he could almost taste it.

At least that was the case until Midoriya closed the gap in a matter of seconds.

"What the fuck?!" The second the curse left his mouth, Midoriya ended up passing him, and too many people to count started to cheer. Bakugou pushed himself for a burst of speed and got tied with Midoriya, but for some insane reason, Midoriya kept getting ahead whenever he relaxed for even a second. He seemed perfectly comfortable running at his pace, yet Bakugou was straining himself just to barely keep up. Soon enough, it was starting to get to him. He couldn't stay even with Midoriya, and he took a definitive lead just as they were closing in on the finish line. As it stood, Bakugou was going to suffer a direct loss to a Quirkless loser like Midoriya.

"The hell with that!" Bakugou, refusing to accept that as a reality, threw everything he had into the singular goal of beating Midoriya. Everything of the world around him seemed to vanish, everything except the finish line and the sound of Midoriya's running. Whatever else was happening didn't matter; all he needed to do was get in front of that sound and be the first to cross the finish line. So long as he did that, everything would be okay, and he could go back to being the best of the best.

And that's exactly what happened. He outpaced Midoriya, even making him trip over his own feet in the process, and got to cross the finish line first. All was right with the world, once more.

Then, as soon as the wider world came back into focus, Suzumiya nailed him in the face with a dropkick.

"What the hell was that, you stupid bitch?! You're gonna get that pissy about me beating you?!" Bakugou asked as he picked himself up, readying himself for a fight.

"Don't you _dare_ give me that! How are you going to call me pissy when you go and pull a stunt like that?! I oughta slap you in the teeth!"

"Suzumiya, that's enough!" one of the teachers called out, eliciting a laugh from Bakugou. "Due to the circumstances at hand, the white team is the winner of the boys relay!"

"What?!" Bakugou felt like punching something.

"Don't give me that, Bakugou. We made it very clear at the start that the sports festival is just like gym class in that you can't use your Quirk to help your performance, and even if you could, you definitely can't use it to attack someone!"

"I-I'm fine, really! It was just a little graze, honest!" Bakugou turned his head to see Midoriya standing up and dusting himself off, and his shirt and a part of his arm looked a little burnt. Suzumiya ran up to him and started yelling at him about something, but Bakugou couldn't hear it over the sound of his own thoughts.

_I hit him with my Quirk_, Bakugou thought. _Without even thinking about it, I used my Quirk on Deku to get ahead of him. That—That Quirkless loser forced me to break the rules to try and beat him!_

Above all else, Bakugou truly hated the backwards parallel reality he had been thrown into.

* * *

The sports festival went on after that, each team taking their share of wins and losses. Eventually, though, it all came to a close with the white team being the winner and Midoriya and Haruhi being named the MVPs of the event. In addition to a couple of blue ribbons, the two of them were given Hero plush toys of their choosing; Midoriya and Haruhi didn't hesitate to go with All Might and Mirko, respectively.

Getting another fine addition to his collection was great and everything, but he would have been satisfied with just the victory on its own. All he had hoped for was not falling flat on his face and embarrassing himself, but not only was he one of the key contributors in his team's victory, but he also got to have everyone praising him for a job well done. He always thought that his time in elementary school would just fizzle out into nothingness, yet here he was, able to go out with something of a bang.

"We sure showed them, didn't we? Get used to all the cheering, Midoriya; this is just a prelude to what the rest of our lives have in store!" The fact that one of his best—no, his best friend—was standing there with him was just the flavor of icing he was looking for.

"It's not supposed to be about that, but yeah, this is pretty nice," Midoriya said. As the other children were dispersing and going about their respective businesses, a weight found its way to Midoriya's back.

"You and Haruhi were awesome, Deku-kun! Super duper awesome!" A weight that perfectly matched his little sister.

"Thanks. Now get off of me." His mother took care of that for him.

"I'm so proud of you, Izuku. Wait until your father hears about this," Inko said.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he flew home to hug you right then and there," Mai said.

"Speaking of parental affection, I believe I promised _someone_ a myriad of kisses for a job well done," Sakura said. Before Haruhi could object, he had already planted a kiss atop her head.

"Ah, gross!" Haruhi cried, repeating the cry as he did it again. "If we're doing this, let's do this where no one can see us!"

"An adult man taking a little girl into the bushes to kiss her. I see nothing wrong with that."

"Don't make this weirder!" Haruhi put on a pout, but she still complied as her parents pulled her away from prying eyes to give her the reward she hated so dearly.

As Midoriya watched the Suzumiyas walk off, he caught sight of his little sister running off somewhere. Inko told him to go get her while she went back to the car, and he had no reason not to comply.

Upon seeing that she had run off to greet Bakugou, he wished that he had been able to think of something.

"Hi Kacchan!" his little sister said. "You were so cool out there, but not as cool as Deku-kun! I thought you were the coolest person there is, but I guess Deku-kun can be just as cool as you! Isn't that great?"

"Beat it, runt," Bakugou said. Midoriya's little walked off with a dejected look on her face, leaving him all alone with Bakugou. "Deku."

"H-Hey, Kacchan," Midoriya stuttered out.

"What the hell are you and Ribbons trying to pull here?"

"I-I don't think we're trying to do anything."

"Bullshit. You two are supposed to be a couple of nobodies, but all of a sudden, you're able to outpaced me and everyone else with even a sliver of talent. The hell's going on here?"

"W-Well, we actually met this Hero a while ago who's been—"

"You two think messing with me is funny?" Midoriya didn't know how to respond to that. "End of the school year, last time I get to show off to everyone, and you two decide to try and make me look like a chump?!"

"We weren't—"

"This was supposed to be _my _time, Deku! _My _time! You and Ribbons had no right to mess it up just because you were born with nothing!"

"That's not—"

"What's it gonna take for you two to learn your place? You're just a couple of losers trying too hard to be literally anything! Why can't you see how pathetic that is?!"

"Where do you get off saying that when you had to cheat to beat me?" Midoriya didn't know where those words came from; they just appeared in his head out of nowhere and slipped out of his mouth before he had time to stop them from coming out.

"What? What?!" Bakugou threw an explosion out in front of Midoriya's face. It didn't actually touch him, but it still made him stumble back and fall on the ground. "I didn't fucking cheat, I played for real! In the real world, no one's gonna stop me from using my Quirk to win, so all I did was run that stupid relay at full power! And you know what that means? It means that no matter what you and Ribbons do, your best is always going to be nothing compared to my best! You two were born Quirkless losers, and you're gonna die Quirkless losers! That's your reality, so hurry up and accept it, already!"

After that, Bakugou stomped off in a huff, leaving Midoriya all alone in the dirt. All alone with spiteful, breaking words swirling around in his head and a singed shirt clinging to his torso. All of it because someone who was supposed to be his friend was mad that he lost at something for the first time in years.

_That's how it always is, isn't it?_ Midoriya asked himself. _Kacchan beating me down and doing everything in his power to remind that it's a miracle I can even breathe the same air as him. That's how it always goes, and I always brush it off because… because… _

"Why do I even do it?" For the life of him, he couldn't remember.

"How's the view from down there? Any more exciting than it would be up here?" In the middle of all of that, Haruhi came over and pulled him back onto his feet. "I don't why you were sitting there, but everyone's waiting for you so we can go to dinner, especially me. I am figuratively starving, so let's go!"

"Right. Sorry." Haruhi headed for where their families were presumably waiting for them, and though he was slow about it, Midoriya got around to following her. "Suzumiya-san."

"Yeah?"

"I think you might be right."

"I'm right about a lot of things. You're gonna have to be more specific."

* * *

A few weeks had passed since the sports festival to bring the world into early December; the city of Musutafu was blanketed in snow, but it did nothing to chill the rage Bakugou had been in since that day. No matter what he did, all of the stupidity and ridiculousness that Midoriya had invoked that day wouldn't leave him; it certainly didn't help that there were still a few people who teased him about his loss in the relay race, no matter how hard he tried to justify it.

Today was a good chance to finally move away from that. Today was the day of the entrance exams for Aldera Junior High. Midoriya, the little sheep that he was, was going to be there, and he could have another shot at putting him in his place by finishing with time to spare while he struggled just to get halfway through. If something like that could happen, he'd just feel so much better about himself; maybe he'd even slip in a quick barb or two for added effect. Whatever he ended up doing, it would have to wait for when Midoriya actually showed up to work.

The test was due to start in five minutes, yet Midoriya, always punctual for these kinds of things, was nowhere to be seen.

"What the hell? Where's the nerd?" Bakugou asked.

"Who, Deku? Beats me. Maybe he got sick," said Hanger-on #1.

"Or maybe he didn't feel the need to beat you in brains _and _brawn," Hanger-on #2 said. Bakugou would have punched him in the face if it wasn't something that would get him thrown out of the test. The test that Midoriya wasn't at, for some reason. Meaning that he had lost an opportunity to get back at him for the unjust humiliation he had suffered.

It was clear that he was still trapped in that backwards parallel reality, and he hated every second of it.

* * *

A few weeks had passed since the sports festival to bring the world into early December; the city of Musutafu was blanketed in snow, but it did nothing to soften the sting of physical labor Midoriya was subjected to by The Kagemusha.

"Hey, at least now when she knocks you down, you can land in a big pile of snow. That's pretty good," Haruhi said as she walked with him back to his home.

"Doesn't _do _me a whole lot of good, though," Midoriya said as he rubbed his midsection.

"Stop stressing about the small stuff like internal bruising and focus on the positives. It's almost Christmas, so that'll be fun."

"Yeah, except for the lead up to the actual day. My sister still believes in Santa Claus, so she makes the whole family go overboard with decorating the place and making sure everything is perfect for his 'arrival'. Maybe it's just me, but I think seven is a little too old to still be believing in stuff like that, don't you?" When Midoriya turned to face Haruhi, she looked just about ready to cry.

"Santa's not real?" Haruhi asked.

"N-No, of course, he is! Just because I don't believe in him doesn't mean he can't exist! Half of the people in present-day, normal society would have been seen as fictional a century ago, so why couldn't there be a bearded fat man who flies around the world delivering presents in a single night? Of course, that would still mean that there wasn't a Santa Claus for all of human history up until Quirks first appeared, but the point is that we have one now and you're just messing with me, aren't you?" Haruhi responded to that with a laugh. "Yeah, real funny."

"Glad you think so. And to answer your earlier question, if you ask me, your sister just embodies the true spirit of the holiday by sticking to her beliefs like that."

"That's one way of looking at it, I guess."

"Hey, Deku!" Obviously, the one who shouted that wasn't Haruhi. Midoriya truly didn't want to be correct about it, but when he turned to face the new speaker, Bakugou and two of his companions were indeed standing behind them.

"H-Hi K-K-Kacchan."

"Hey, we're an important conversation about Christmas, so we don't need any of your bah humbugness ruining the mood!" Haruhi said.

"I'm not here for you, Ribbons," Bakugou said. "Deku, why the hell weren't you at the exam today?"

"I-I was training with Suzumiya-san, so—"

"So what? Since when are you the kind of guy to ditch a test to hang out with a girl?"

"Why do you even care?" Haruhi asked. "Seriously, for all you go on about how much you hate having Midoriya around, you sure are making a big deal about him not spending one afternoon with you. What, are Thing 1 and Thing 2 over there not good enough for you?"

"I take offense to that, but she's not wrong," said one of the duo—Midoriya didn't know if Haruhi considered him Thing 1 or Thing 2.

"No one asked you, dumbass! And Ribbons, stop butting in before I—"

"I'm not going to Aldera!" Midoriya couldn't let that kind of back and forth keep going, so he needed to just come out and say what needed to be said, no matter the consequences.

"What?" No matter how dire the consequences may be.

"I-I know that our parents wanted us to go to the same school, but for a variety of reasons, I don't think I'd enjoy myself that much there. That's why I'm going to East Junior High with Suzumiya-san, and all of my backups are in the same general area. I-I mean, East Junior is a little closer to home, it looks just as good on a resume as Aldera, and if I go there, I won't have to deal with…" The rest of his sentence fell apart in his mouth as Bakugou stomped over right into his face.

"Where do you get the fucking nerve, Deku?! You embarrass me in front of the whole school, and then you decide to just run away before I can get even with you?!" Thing 1 and Thing 2's requests for him to calm down fell on deaf ears.

"Th-That's not—"

"The only thing he's running from is the toxic environment you've trapped him in for the past seven years. If that makes him a bad person, then I would just love to see a good person in your book!" Haruhi said. Bakugou's head snapped around towards her so fast Midoriya was afraid it would go flying off.

"You. Ever since you came here, Deku's been forgetting his place more and more," Bakugou said. "He knew not to mess with me before you came along, before you started filling his head with crazy ideas of going against me!" Bakugou took a pause. Then, with a wicked grin, he said, "Or maybe it's all because you've been _emptying_ his head this whole time."

"What?!"

"What?" Much to Midoriya's own surprise, his response was the less emotional of the two, like there was so much to process all at once that it was hard to lock down a single feeling.

"Is that it, Deku? You've been feeling more confident because you've met the one and only girl who'd want to touch your scrawny ass? How far'd she have to go with you to make you feel like you could do this, huh?" Thing 1 and Thing 2 were more insistent with their requests for him to tone it down, but they still fell on deaf ears.

And Midoriya still felt something swelling inside.

"You've got a _lot_ of problems, you know that?" Haruhi asked, her eyes looking ready to shoot lasers at Bakugou.

"What, struck a nerve? How much did I get right, anyway?" Bakugou asked.

"I've got five friends you can ask about—"

Before anything could happen, it was Midoriya, of all people, who punched Bakugou in the face. He did so because he knew exactly what to do with all of the emotions swelling around inside of him.

And it was probably a long time coming.

"You piece of—" Before Bakugou could finish, Midoriya screamed at the top of his lungs and punched him again, followed by a low kick that swept his legs and knocked him to the ground.

"Where do you get off talking about her like that?! You don't get to talk to her or anyone like that just because they're guilty of the great crime of being nice to me! Just because they've been a better friend to me in half a year than you have in seven!"

"Why, you!" Bakugou shot up, jumped at Midoriya, and threw an explosion at Midoriya. It hit him square in the face, but Midoriya stood his ground and head-butted Bakugou the second the smoke cleared.

"Kacchan, you-you blame me meeting Suzumiya-san for all of this, but if that's true, then it's your fault! _You're_ the one who got us to start hanging out, and all because you thought it'd be funny to watch the two Quirkless kids become friends!" Bakugou punched Midoriya in the stomach, but Midoriya grabbed his arm, swung him around in a circle, and threw him into a nearby bus bench. "This isn't about Suzumiya-san, and it's not about you! This is about me being sick of you treating me like garbage! You're supposed to be my friend, and I-I want to believe the Kacchan who's a good person is still around, but I'm sick and tired of being your punching bag while I wait for him to come back! I'm done with it, okay?! I'm—" Bakugou sprung up with another explosion at the ready, but Midoriya ducked down to dodge and delivered an uppercut to his jaw. "—done!" Bakugou stumbled back for a bit before falling into the snow with a thud. Thing 1 and Thing 2 ran over to his side, but neither one was offering much in the way of support.

It was at that moment that the knowledge of everything he had done hit him. With that, he had a sudden desire to vomit, but he gave precedence to a different course of action.

"Tactical retreat!" Midoriya grabbed Haruhi's hand and sprinted away from the scene, never once bothering to look back. He was sure that he passed the corner he needed to take to go home, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was putting distance between him and Bakugou.

"Okay, that's enough, you can stop running now!" Haruhi said after five minutes that felt like an hour, a command he was more than willing to go along with.

"Sorry," Midoriya said through panting breaths.

"Feel free to let go of my hand at any time, too."

"S-Sorry!" He wished he was quicker about that one.

"It's fine, it's just—whatever. For the record, I could have done everything you did back there, but better. I don't need you acting like a white knight defending my honor and… my chastity when I'm more than capable of kicking ass all on my own."

"I know. I know." In the middle of his haggard breathing, Haruhi locked her arm around his. With that, it got a little harder to breathe.

"Thanks for that, though." All Midoriya could manage was an awkward nod as they walked back in what was hopefully the direction of his home.

If Midoriya had doubts about making the right decision, they all faded away right then and there.

* * *

_The aftermath of my fight with Kacchan went better than I thought it would. His mom called my mom and asked if she knew anything about Kacchan coming home covered in bruises and a little blood—apparently he never said a word about it, but I couldn't figure out how to be that quiet. My mom looked disappointed not in me, but in the fact that things between us had gotten that bad, and she just told me how happy she was that Haruhi was around._

_If anyone was upset over it, it was my sister. Against all odds, she and Kacchan actually liked each other, so the knowledge that she might not get to see him again for who knows how long looked like it was crushing her heart. For what it was worth, I told her she could keep calling me Deku. As crazy as it sounds, I still wanted to be Kacchan's friend, but I couldn't do it again until he started being a better person. I don't know how long that's going to take, so until then, might as well let someone hold onto Deku._

_School was also not as bad as I thought it'd be. Haruhi, Kacchan and I didn't speak a word of what happened, and even if people figured it out, Kacchan shut up anyone who tried to say something about it. He never talked to me directly again, though. It felt weird, but at least Haruhi was there to help me through it._

_Time passed, fall turned to winter turned to spring, and with it, Haruhi and I were no longer elementary school students. Now we were the newest students of East Junior High._

_And this is where things really started to get interesting._


End file.
